VOICE MAGAZINE DECEMBER 2011 ISSUE by Voice Magazine

URBAN PROFESSIONAL LIFESTYLE

Urban Professional Lifestyle

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On December 6, 2011 President Obama delivered his economic speech in Osawatomie, Kansas. This was the same site used by President Theodore Roosevelt on August 13 1910 when he revealed his vision for America and the upcoming 1912 elections. Roosevelt’s New Nationalism was a call for increased federal power to regulate interstate industry, and sweeping social reforms designed to put human rights above property rights. Social Security, an eight hour work day, worker’s compensation insurance, a federal securities commission and an inheritance tax were just some of those sweeping social reforms which are still in existence today. Roosevelt believed that “the material progress and prosperity of a nation are desirable chiefly so long as they lead to the moral and material welfare of all good citizens. “These values gave rise to the largest middle class and the strongest economy the world has ever known. It was here, in America, that the most productive workers and innovative companies turned out the best products on Earth, and every American shared in that pride and success -- from those in executive suites to middle management to those on the factory floor. If you gave it your all, you’d take enough home to raise your family, send your kids to school, have your health care covered, and put a little away for retirement,” stated Obama in his speech echoing Roosevelt’s call to a New Nationalism. In what he called “the defining issue of our time and a make or break moment for the middle class, and all those who are fighting to get into the middle class, Obama took a big step toward a serious jobs program while embracing the principle of bipartisanship by invoking the progressive side of Republican Teddy Roosevelt’s campaign against the rising inequality of his time. Obama anchored all his arguments with an assault on the growing inequality in the US today, clearly showing the impact of the Occupy movement, and the labor-led victories in Ohio, New Jersey, Wisconsin, Arizona and Maine. The President targeted four areas in the speech: higher education, infrastructure, progressive taxation, and financial regulation. 1.

Higher Ed: Improving college access is vitally important. However, we must be mindful that education policy is supply-side. It’s critical in the medium and long term, but it’s a lesser part of the solution to our biggest short-term challenge: the quantity of jobs. There are many educated people out there that are over 99 weeks without a job. 16

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Infrastructure: This is the number one place to invest a lot of energy in setting a jobs agenda. But, as Jared Bernstein, the economist and Executive Director of the newly formed White House Middle Class Working Families Task Force writes: “The key here is to not get hung up on shovel ready-like-it-or-not, we’ll need the work for much longer than that. We need to think about large-scale ideas that go beyond roads and bridges.” There is no shortage of work that needs to be done. Tax Reform: As the President stressed in his speech, public infrastructure investment costs money, so fiscal policy must account for it. But, as Bernsteain argues, I agree -keep it very simple: Stop favoring one type of income over another. The distortions in the tax code around “investment income,” like capital gains and dividends, lose mountains of revenue, feed inequality, and are at the heart of the “Buffett problem”- the fact that many of the wealthiest households face lower rates than average folks. Transaction Tax: If nothing else is done (separating investment and commercial banking, etc) making the financial industry INSURE THEMSELVES against their own recklessness is a MUST.

The President’s speech was a beacon call to the bold actions needed save the Middle Class and to reel in our economy out of economic chaos. Some still say that the President is inciting class warfare. I say that the promise of American life is the creation of practical equality of opportunity for all citizens. On the cover this month we feature music’s golden girl Rihanna. Rihanna has sold more than 20 million albums and 60 million singles which makes her one of the bestselling artists of all time. In this issue we profile the beautiful Ms Haiti The Model. Ms Haiti is an aspiring model with Haitian, Cuban, Jamaican and Italian ancestry who started modeling in February 2010. She is a rising star that needs to be recognized. Happy Holidays!! Hope you enjoy it! Regards,

W. E. “Pete” Reeves Founder/Publisher 17

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Publisher

VERVE Media, Inc. P.O. Box 2704 Springfield, Illinois 62708 Office : 217-761-5778 Fax: 217-793-6939 Cell: 901-832-1144 Email: voicemagonline@gmail.com Web Site: voiceonline.yolasite.com

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W. E. “Pete” Reeves

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Natasha Crider

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Teresa Haley

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Tiffany Hatchett

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DEPARTMENTS

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Robyn Rihanna Fenty better known as simply Rihanna, is a Barbadian recording artist. Born in Saint Michael, Barbados, Rihanna moved to the United States at the age of 16 to pursue a recording career under the guidance of record producer Evan Rogers. She subsequently signed a contract with Def Jam Recordings after auditioning for then-label head Jay-Z. In 2005, Rihanna released her debut studio album, Music of the Sun, which peaked in the top ten of the Billboard 200 chart and features the Billboard Hot 100 hit single "Pon de Replay." Less than a year later, she released her second studio album, A Girl Like Me (2006), which peaked within the top five of the Billboard albums chart, and produced her first Hot 100 number one single, "SOS". Rihanna's third studio album, Good Girl Gone Bad (2007), spawned four chart-topping singles "Umbrella", "Take a Bow", "Disturbia" and "Don't Stop the Music", and was nominated for nine Grammy Awards, winning Best Rap/Sung Collaboration for "Umbrella," which features Jay-Z. Her fourth studio album Rated R, released in November 2009, produced the top 10 singles "Russian Roulette", "Hard" and "Rude Boy", which achieved the number-one spot on the Billboard Hot 100. Loud (2010), her fifth studio album, contains the number-one hits "Only Girl (In the World)", "What's My Name?" and "S&M". "We Found Love" was released in September 2011 as the lead single from her sixth studio album and has topped the charts in over ten countries. Talk That Talk, Rihanna's sixth album, was released in November 2011. Rihanna has sold more than 20 million albums and 60 million singles which makes her one of the best selling artists of all time. She is the youngest artist in Billboard charts history to achieve eleven number-one singles on the Hot 100. As of January 2011, Rihanna had sold approximately 33.7 million digital singles in the United States. By September 2011 she had shipped 7.3 million album units in the US. Billboard named Rihanna the Digital Songs Artist of the 2000s decade, and ranked her as the 17th Artist of the 2000s decade. She has received several accolades, including the 2007 World Music Awards for World's Best-Selling Pop Female Artist and Female Entertainer of the Year, and the 2011 Brit Award for Best International Female Solo Artist. She has also amassed a total of four Grammy Awards, five American Music Awards, and eighteen Billboard 23

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Music Awards. Rihanna has also been appointed the official ambassador of youth and culture for Barbados.

Biography 1988â&#x20AC;&#x201C;2004: Early life and career beginnings Rihanna was born Robyn Rihanna Fenty on February 20, 1988, in Saint Michael, Barbados, to Monica Braithwaite, a retired accountant, and Ronald Fenty, a warehouse supervisor for a garment factory. Her mother, a native of Guyana, is AfroGuyanese, and her father is of Barbadian and Irish descent. The eldest of three siblings, she has two brothers, Rorrey and Rajad Fenty. She also has two half-sisters and a halfbrother from her father's side, each born by different mothers before Rihanna's father married her mother. She grew up listening to reggae music, and began singing at around the age of seven. Her childhood was deeply affected by her father's addiction to crack cocaine, alcohol, and marijuana, and her parents' rocky marriage ended when she was 14, although he remained a part of her life. During her parents' marriage, she suffered from excruciating headaches leading doctors to think she had a brain tumor and underwent several CAT scans from the age of eight until her parents separated. She grew up in a modest three-bed bungalow in Bridgetown and would sell clothes with her dad on a street stall. She attended Charles F. Broome Memorial School, a primary school in Barbados, and then the Combermere School, where she formed a musical trio with two of her classmates. She was an army cadet in a sub-military programme that trained with the military of Barbados and Shontelle was her drill sergeant. Although she initially wanted to graduate from high school, she chose to pursue her musical career instead. In December 2003, Rihanna met American music producer Evan Rogers through a mutual friend who knew Rogers' wife. When Rogers and his Bajan-born wife were in 24

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Barbados for the holidays, Rihanna and her two bandmates auditioned for him in his hotel room, who said that "the minute Rihanna walked into the room, it was like the other two girls didn't exist." While auditioning for Rogers, she sang Destiny's Child's cover of "Emotion". Impressed, Rogers set up a second meeting, and, with her mom present, invited her to do some recording and write with him and Carl Sturken at their studio in New York. Shortly after turning 16, she won the Miss Combermere school beauty pageant, as well as her high school talent show with a performance of Mariah Carey's "Hero". Over the next year, Rihanna and her mom shuttled back and forth to Rogers' home in Stamford, Connecticut. With the help of Sturken, she recorded a four-song demo, which included the ballad "Last Time", a cover of Whitney Houston's "For the Love of You", and what would become her first hit, "Pon de Replay". It took a year to record the demos, as Rihanna was still going to school and therefore would only record during her summer and Christmas school breaks. In January 2005, Rogers began shopping Rihanna's four-song demo to various recording companies. A copy of the demo was sent to Def Jam Recordings, where Jay Brown, an A&R executive, overheard it and played it for the label's then-president, Jay-Z. When he heard "Pon de Replay", Jay-Z was skeptical about Rihanna at first because he felt that the song was too big for her, stating that "when a song is that big, it's hard [for a new artist] to come back from. I don't sign songs, I sign artists". Def Jam was the first label to respond and invited her to audition where she sang "For the Love of You" for Jay-Z and L.A. Reid of Island Def Jam Music Group. She was signed the same day and canceled a set of meetings with other labels. After signing with Def Jam in February 2005, she relocated to the United States and moved in with Rogers and his wife. Although she still thinks of herself as Robyn, she chose her middle name as her 25

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stage name because, to her, the name Rihanna is just a stage that started in a recording studio in 2005.

2005â&#x20AC;&#x201C;06: Music of the Sun and A Girl Like Me Left: Rihanna performing at the Jingle Ball in 2005

After signing with Def Jam, she spent the next three months recording and completing her debut album. The album featured production from Evan Rogers, Carl Sturken, Stargate and Poke & Tone. She first collaborated with rapper Memphis Bleek on his fourth studio album 534 before her debut. She released her debut single, "Pon de Replay", on August 22, 2005, which peaked at number two on the Billboard Hot 100 and the UK Singles Chart. It became a global hit where it peaked within the top ten across fifteen countries. Her debut album, Music of the Sun, was released in August 2005 in the United States. The album reached number ten on the Billboard 200, selling 69,000 copies in its first week. The album sold over two million copies worldwide and received a Gold certification by the Recording Industry Association of America, denoting shipments to United States retailers of over 500,000 units. Her music was marketed within the reggae genres because of her Caribbean descent. The album received mixed reviews by music critics. Rolling Stone magazine rated it 2.5 out of 5 stars and described as lacking the replay value, ingenuity and rhythm of the single with "generic vocal hiccups and frills" of US R&B inflecting upon her "Caribbean charm". Sal Cinquemani of Slant Magazine described the album as a "glut of teen R&B chanteuses " and described her lead single "Pon de Replay" as "a dancehall-pop mixture that owes plenty of its sweat and shimmy to BeyoncĂŠ's "Baby Boy". A reviewer for Entertainment Weekly commented that the "dancehall/R&B debut is filled with chintzy production and maudlin arrangements that block out the Music of the Sun." The albums second single, "If It's Lovin' that You Want" was less successful than "Pon de Replay", having managed a peak position of number thirty-six in the United States, and number eleven in the United Kingdom. The single proved to be well-received in Australia, Ireland and New Zealand reaching the top ten in those countries. A month after the release of her debut album, she began working on her second studio album. The album contained production from record producers Evan Rogers and Carl Sturken who produced most of her debut album, Stargate, J. R. Rotem and label-mate singer-songwriter Ne-Yo. While recording the album, Rihanna served as an opening act for Gwen Stefani to promote her debut album. The lead single, "SOS", peaked at number 26

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one on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming her first number-one in the United States. A Girl Like Me was released in April 2006, less than eight months after her debut. The album reached number five on the Billboard 200 selling 115,000 copies in its first week and has been certified platinum by the RIAA, having shipped over one million units. Internationally, the album peaked at number one on the Top Canadian Albums, five on the UK Albums Chart and number five on the Irish Album Chart. The critical response to the album was mixed; Rolling Stone magazine commented "Like her filler-packed debut album, this similar but superior follow-up doesn't deliver anything else as ingenious as its lead single." Critics described the album as a record that almost identically alternates between the sunny dancehall/dub-pop, hip-hop-infused club bangers and gushy, adultoriented ballads. The second single, "Unfaithful", became a major worldwide hit, reaching the top ten in dozen countries around the world, including the United States where it reached number six on the Billboard Hot 100, as well as topping the charts in Canada, France and Switzerland. The albums third single, "We Ride" failed to reprise the success of the lead single but the fourth single, "Break It Off" featuring Sean Paul, jumped from number fifty-two to number ten eventually peaking at number nine. After the release of the album, Rihanna embarked on her first headlining tour, the Rihanna: Live in Concert Tour. She then embarked on the Rock The Block Tour and then toured with Pussycat Dolls from November 2006 to February 2007 in the United Kingdom. Rihanna also made her acting debut in a cameo role in the straight-to-DVD film Bring It On: All or Nothing, which was released on August 8, 2006.

2007â&#x20AC;&#x201C;08: New image and Good Girl Gone Bad

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With her third studio album, Good Girl Gone Bad (2007), Rihanna wanted to head in a new direction with the help of music producers Timbaland, will.i.am and Sean Garrett, and re-imagine her album compositions with fresh, uptempo dance tracks. She adopted a more rebellious image while recording the album, eventually dying her hair black and cutting it short. Rihanna commented, "I want to keep people dancing but still be soulful at the same time [...] You feel different every album, and [at] this stage I feel like I want to do a lot of uptempo [songs]." The album topped the charts in countries like the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, Brazil, Russia and Ireland, and it peaked at number two in the United States and Australia. Unlike previous work, the album featured a more dance-pop sound instead of the dancehall, reggae and ballad styles. The album received positive reviews by critics, becoming her most critically acclaimed album at that time compared to her previous efforts. 28

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Good Girl Gone Bad yielded four chart-topping singles â&#x20AC;&#x201C; all singles reaching the top three on the Billboard Hot 100 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; including the worldwide number-one hit "Umbrella," featuring Jay-Z. In addition to reaching number one in various countries, "Umbrella" was the number-one single in the United Kingdom for ten consecutive weeks, making it the longest-running number-one single since Wet Wet Wet's single "Love Is All Around" spent fifteen weeks at the top in 1994. The song is listed number three on the 100 Best Songs of 2007 published by Rolling Stone magazine. Her other singles, "Shut Up and Drive", "Don't Stop The Music" and "Hate That I Love You", were released from the album and were able to mirror the success of "Umbrella," with "Don't Stop the Music" reaching number three on the Billboard Hot 100 while peaking at number one in Australia, the Netherlands, France, Germany, and Switzerland. At the 2007 American Music Awards, she won the Favorite Soul/R&B Female Artist. The re-issue of her third album, titled Good Girl Gone Bad: Reloaded, which was released in June 2008, features three new 29

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songs. The first single from the re-release, "Take a Bow", topped the charts in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. "If I Never See Your Face Again", a duet with Maroon 5, was also included in the re-release, alongside "Disturbia", which reached number-one in the United States and New Zealand. "Disturbia" reached to number four before reaching number one, as her previous single, "Take a Bow", was at number two, making Rihanna the seventh female singer to have two songs in the top five. She was also featured on rapper T.I.'s "Live Your Life," which peaked at number-one on the Billboard Hot 100, giving Rihanna her fifth number-one single on the Hot 100 thus far ("SOS," "Umbrella," "Take a Bow," "Disturbia," and "Live Your Life"). This made Rihanna one of the two female solo artists with the most number-one singles of the decade, with the other being BeyoncĂŠ Knowles. A remix of the album, Good Girl Gone Bad: The Remixes, was also released containing remixed versions of songs from the original album. The album has shipped over two million units in the United States, receiving a two-times-platinum certification from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA); this gave Rihanna her bestselling album to date. Rihanna was nominated in four categories at the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards, winning Monster Single of the Year and Video of the Year. At the 2008 Grammy Awards, Rihanna earned her first Grammy Award for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration, in addition to receiving five other nominations, including Record of the Year, Best Dance Recording, Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group and Best R&B Song. In support of the album, she kicked off her second headlining tour, the Good Girl Gone Bad Tour on September 12, 2007, with several shows across the United States, Canada and Europe[64] and then embarked on the Glow in the Dark Tour with 30

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Kanye West, Lupe Fiasco, and N.E.R.D on April 16, 2008. Rihanna won Favorite Pop/Rock Female Artist and Favorite Soul/R&B Female Artist at the 2008 American Music Awards. In December 2008, Margeaux Watson of Entertainment Weekly wrote an article entitled "Rihanna: Diva of the year" which he referred to her breakout success of 2008.

2009–10: Domestic violence case and Rated R On February 8, 2009, Rihanna's scheduled performance at the 2009 Grammy Awards was cancelled.[70] Reports later surfaced regarding an alleged altercation with then-boyfriend, singer Chris Brown, who was arrested on suspicion of making criminal threats. On March 5, 2009, Brown was charged with assault and making criminal threats. Due to a leaked photograph from the Los Angeles Police Department obtained by TMZ.com—which revealed Rihanna had sustained visible injuries—an organization known as STOParazzi has proposed a law called "Rihanna's Law," which, if enacted, would "deter employees of law enforcement agencies from releasing photos or information that exploits crime victims." Gil Kaufman of VH1 reported "[t]he nonstop coverage of the Rihanna/Brown case has brought up a number of issues regarding the privacy of alleged victims of domestic violence, including the decision by almost all major news outlets to divulge the identity of the victim—which is not typically done in domestic-violence cases" and the controversial distribution of the leaked photograph. Rihanna was subpoenaed to testify during a preliminary hearing in L.A. on June 22, 2009. "The DA told me Rihanna will be subpoenaed. I will accept on her behalf," Rihanna's attorney, Donald Etra told Us Weekly. On June 22, 2009, Brown pled guilty to the felony assault. In exchange for his plea Brown received five years probation and was ordered to stay fifty yards away from Rihanna, unless at public events, which then will be reduced to ten yards.

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Rihanna made an appearance as the central character in Kanye West's music video "Paranoid". She also collaborated with Jay-Z and West on "Run This Town" which peaked at number two on Billboard Hot 100 as well as reaching the top ten in ten other countries. The song won the Grammy Award for Best Rap Song and Best Rap/Sung Collaboration, bringing her total to three Grammys. Her fourth studio album, Rated R, was released in November 2009. Rolling Stone was favorable of the album commenting that "Rihanna has transformed her sound and made one of the best pop records of the year". The album debuted at number four on the Billboard 200 and has been certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for shipment of one million copies. Its first three singles: "Russian Roulette", "Hard" and "Rude Boy" peaked within the top ten on the Billboard Hot 100 with "Rude Boy" reaching number-one. The song also topped the charts in Australia, while reaching number two in the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, New Zealand and Switzerland. Two other singles were released from Rated R, which included "Rockstar 101" and the final single from the album, "Te Amo". To further promote the album, she embarked on her worldwide tour, the Last Girl on Earth Tour.

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2010â&#x20AC;&#x201C;present: Loud, Talk That Talk and film debut In January 2010, Rihanna won two Barbados Music Awards for "Song of the Decade" with "Umbrella" and "Entertainer of the Decade". She was named "International Female Artist of the Year" at the 2010 NRJ Music Awards. During the summer, she collaborated with rapper Eminem on "Love the Way You Lie", which reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100, as well as other countries including Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway and Sweden. "Love the Way You Lie" became the seventh number one Billboard Hot 100 single of her career, making her the female artist with the fifth-most number ones in the chart's history. She also lent her vocals to the hook of "All of the Lights", the fourth single from Kanye West's fifth studio album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, which features additional vocals from several other recording artists, including John Legend, The-Dream, Elly Jackson, Alicia Keys, Fergie, Kid Cudi, and Elton John. In October 2010, she released a self-titled book, and announced that she was parting ways with manager Marc Jordan and will henceforth be managed by Jay-Z's Roc Nation Management. She is also starting her own company, Rihanna Entertainment, in which she will "merge all of her businesses including music, film, fragrance, fashion and book ventures".

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Rihanna released her fifth studio album, Loud, on November 16, 2010. It debuted at number three on the Billboard 200, selling 207,000 copies in its first week, making it the biggest opening week sales of her career so far. Its lead single, "Only Girl (In the World)", reached number one in more than ten countries including Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The song also won a Grammy Award for Best Dance Recording at the 53rd Grammy Awards. The album's second single, "What's My Name?", featuring Canadian rapper Drake, also reached number one in the United States and on the official UK singles chart, making Rihanna the first female solo artist to have five number one singles in the United Kingdom in consecutive years. The song reached number one on the Hot 100 before "Only Girl (In the World)", making it the first time in Hot 100 history that an album's debut single reached number one after the second single.[98] With her third international single from Loud, she earned another milestone when "S&M", featuring Britney Spears reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming the youngest artist in the chart's 52-year history to achieve ten number-one singles. "Man Down" and "California King Bed" were the two subsequent singles released from the album. The final single from Loud, "Cheers (Drink to That)", reached number seven on the Hot 100. In June 2011, Rihanna embarked on her worldwide concert tour, Loud Tour, to promote the album. In October 2011, two collaborations featuring Rihanna were released; Coldplay's "Princess of China" from the album Mylo Xyloto and Nicki Minaj's Fly from the album Pink Friday. During that month she appeared in the Judges' Houses round of the American reality TV program, The X Factor, assisting L.A. Reid as a guest mentor. Rihanna's sixth album, Talk That Talk, is scheduled to be released on November 21, 2011 in both deluxe and standard editions. The lead single "We Found Love" premiered on September 22, 2011 and was released on the same day for digital download in the US. With the ascension of "We Found Love" to number nine on the US charts, Rihanna became the fastest solo artist in the chart's history to achieve twenty Hot 100 top-ten singles, breaking the previous record set by Madonna. The song later became Rihanna's 34

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eleventh number one single on the Billboard Hot 100. "You Da One" was released as the second single on November 11, 2011 and a music video for the song is planned to be shot in London before the end of 2011. Rihanna will appear in the 2012 film Battleship, which is based on the game of the same name.

Artistry Music Volume 65 of the Contemporary Black Biography book series notes that "Rihanna is the rare rhythm and blues (R&B) diva to emerge from the Caribbean world." Becoming an international sensation, Rihanna is known for blending R&B with Caribbean music, such as reggae and dancehall. At the time of her debut, reviewers referred to her as a "bubblegum queen" and her music to "teen pop. Larry Meyler of The Sun stated that "Rihanna going bad is very good" and that she had "[shaken] off any 'teen pop' image as she rocked the stage." While performing at the Ottawa Bluesfest, Denis Armstrong of Canadian Online Explorer commented on her performance saying "her show was a Disneyesque choreographed fantasy of non-stop hipswivelling, sassy attitude and personal endearments and a string of funky, sugar-free hits." Rihanna was originally marketed as a reggae singer since she burst into the music scene in 2005, with a styles of pop, R&B and dancehall. Her music include various styles of musical genres, including contemporary R&B, dancepop and the Caribbean music styles of reggae and dancehall. With the release of Music of the Sun and its lead single "Pon de Replay", Jason Birchmeier of Allmusic described Rihanna's musical style as "synthesize Caribbean rhythms and beats with standard-issue urban dance-pop: Caribbean-inflected urban, if you will." Rihanna is described as utilizing "dancehall-lite beats and a reggae vocal cadence." NME describes the singer as a "heady mix of dancehall, reggae and contemporary R&B." Barry Walters of Rolling Stone considers Rihanna's A Girl Like Me to be "lightweight dancehall and R&B jams." 35

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After the release of Good Girl Gone Bad, Allmusic's Andy Kellman credits Rihanna to be "as pop as pop gets." Kelefa Sanneh of The New York Times described her hit "Umbrella" as a lightweight pop confection with a heavy hip-hop backbeat, a breezy love song enriched by those unexpectedly goth-sounding keyboards and by the incongruous hint of anguish in Rihannaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s girlish voice. Her debut album featured production from pop veterans Evan Rogers and Carl Sturken who first discovered her. Sturken and Rogers have collaborated with Rihanna many times, including with her debut single "Pon de Replay", which helped launch her career with the tradition of reggae and dance pop and collaborated on her second album. Rihanna then enlisted into the pop and contemporary R&B working with music producer Stargate and singer-songwriter Ne-Yo on "Unfaithful" and sampling the key section, bass line, and drum beat from Soft Cell's 1981 single "Tainted Love" on "SOS". With songs like "Kisses Don't Lie" and "Shut Up and Drive", her music style became more rock-oriented. Unlike Music of the Sun or A Girl Like Me, her third album contained a more dance-pop sound and less of the dancehall, reggae and ballad styles of her previous albums. She has included various styles of music from uptempo pop-reggae with "Pon De Replay", to an 80s new wave fueled club banger "SOS" to the whiff of gothic horror in a love song "Unfaithful". Most of her love subject ballads contain a midtempo pop sound, with an R&B influences that uses of a gently strummed acoustic guitar with the production of Stargate and the songs written by Ne-Yo. Some of her up-tempo dance-pop songs include production from Carl Sturken and Evan Rogers, Christopher "Tricky" Stewart and J. R. Rotem. She has also sampled songs from other artist like Soft Cell's "Tainted Love" on "SOS", New Order's "Blue Monday" on "Shut Up and Drive" and '70s original song "Soul Makossa" of Manu Dibango with a part of the chorus from Michael Jackson's "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" on "Don't Stop the Music". 36

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Influences Rihanna has named Madonna as her idol and biggest influence, and said she wants to be the "black Madonna". She said: "I think that Madonna was a great inspiration for me, especially on my earlier work. If I had to examine her evolution through time, I think she reinvented her clothing style and music with success every single time. And at the same time remained a real force in entertainment in the whole world." Rihanna also cited Mariah Carey as her influence and idol. She said "I looked up to [Mariah] a lot and I still do. I admire her as an artist, and to [compete with her] was a moment I will never forget for the rest of my life. Of Janet Jackson, Rihanna has commented that "[s]he was one of the first female pop icons that I could relate to ... She was so vibrant, she had so much energy. She still has power. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve seen her on stage, and she can stand there for 20 minutes and have the whole arena scream at her. You have to love Janet." BeyoncĂŠ has been named as a major influence, citing that she was inspired to start her career after watching Knowles on television as part of a Destiny's Child performance. Her other musical influences include Bob Marley, (for whom she built a shrine in her Los Angeles home) Alicia Keys Whitney Houston, Destiny's Child, Celine Dion, Brandy and Gwen Stefani. Her friend and former Island Def Jam record label artist Fefe Dobson was someone that she admired and looked up to, having a fellow artist writing, singing, and performing the music she truly loves.

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Rihanna's music contains strong influences of Caribbean music which include reggae and dancehall. The video for "Rude Boy" was inspired by her Caribbean roots. In an interview, she stated that while growing up in Barbados she grew up listening to reggae music and when she came to the United States she was exposed to many different types of music. During the Good Girl Gone Bad Tour, she did a cover to "Is This Love" which paid tribute to Marley; she would later do a cover song to Bob Marley & The Wailers' "Redemption Song".Rihanna commented that Marilyn Monroe and vintage clothing served for visual inspiration for the music video "Hate That I Love You" and "Rehab"; in contrast, the "dark, creepy" scenes of "Disturbia" have drawn comparison to Michael Jackson's Thriller. The music video ranked number five on the "Top Five Most Paranoid Music Videos" published by MTV Buzzworthy. Jon Bream of the Star Tribune commented "[i]n the tradition of Madonna and Janet Jackson, Rihanna has become the video vixen of the '00s ... Rihanna has perfected the pout, the long-legged strut and trend-setting hairdos that keep women and men alike checking her out on YouTube." George Epaminondas of InStyle 38

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considers Rihanna's music videos to be "cinematic" due to her "blend of lush island rhythms and swinging pop and ... mischievous sensuality."

Public image New York magazine described Rihanna's early look as that of a cookie-cutter teen queen while stating that she has the ability to shift looks dramatically and with great ease. This was underscored when in March 2011 American Chronicle writer Arturo Tora termed her “Rihannaissance Woman.” Around the time of the release of her second album, many critics felt that Rihanna's sound and musical material were too similar to those of Beyoncé. Negative reviews appeared, in which her music, music videos, performances and her image were compared to those of Beyoncé, which garnered Rihanna much criticism. Some media even claimed that Jay-Z fashioned her to be a replica of Beyoncé. During the release of her third album, Good Girl Gone Bad, she adopted a more sexual image. Sonya Magett of Black Voices reported that Rihanna's style has become quite risqué since she burst onto the scene four years ago. After revealing a new image while headlining her first tour, she was likely to be criticized for her tight leather outfit during each show. A review in The Times compared Rihanna's stage wardrobe styling to that of Janet Jackson. He described her outfit as "a vision of Ann Summers couture in thigh-high boots and a few scraps of black PVC." Stuart Derdeyn of The Province commented that "even with the whole haute couture B&D clearly firing on all points, she's still got a ways to go to become the new Janet Jackson." Rihanna has appeared on Maxim's Hot 100 list five consecutive years, listed in positions eight in 2007, fifteen in 2008, eight in 2009, six in 2010, and twenty-two in 2011. She was also listed on People's 10 Best Dressed Stars of 2008, and ranked seventeenth on Glamour magazine's list of the 50 Most Glamorous Women in 2009. Tracey Lomrantz of Glamour commented, "If style risks could be measured in miles, Rihanna would have criss-crossed the globe a thousand times over already." Rihanna was also declared as Woman of the Year 2009 by Glamour. In June 2007, Gillette named her the Venus Breeze's Celebrity Legs of a Goddess. In October 2011, Esquire declared Rihanna as the Sexiest Woman Alive. Rihanna has four wax figures of herself at Madame Tussauds Wax Museums in Washington D.C., Vienna, Berlin and London. 39

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40 Rihanna's tattoos include a music note tattoo on her ankle, a Pisces sign behind her right Urban Professional Lifestyle

ear, a Sanskrit prayer going down her hip, a star in her left ear, the word love on her left middle finger, an Arabic phrase meaning "Freedom in Christ" on her ribcage area, a trail of stars going down the back of her neck, a skull with a pink hair bow, the phrase "shhh..." on her right index finger, the date 11.4.86 in Roman numerals on top of her left shoulder, a henna-style dragon claw including hibiscus flowers, a handgun under her right armpit, a six-word phrase on her chest, and the phrase "rebelle fleur" on her neck, which means "rebel/rebellious flower" in French. Her gun tattoo was planned to be just below her shoulders but was ultimately located on her ribcage. In answer to criticism for her violence-themed tattoo, Keith "Bang Bang" McCurdy, her tattoo artist, was quick to explain his opinion that the image simply "represents strength and power". Her thirteenth tattoo which she had was on her chest and reads, "Never a failure, always a lesson". She had it tattoed backwards, McCurdy says, because she wanted to be able to read it in the mirror. When he asked why she wanted it, she said that it was her "motto in life for everything".

Other ventures In October 2005, Rihanna struck her first endorsement deal with Secret Body Spray for them to sponsor her first tour, Rihanna's Secret Body Spray Tour In 2006, Rihanna participated in several endorsement deals, including Nike sportswear for the launch of her "SOS" and J. C. Penney. That same year, she received an endorsement deal from Clinique to promote their Happy fragrance. She recorded a song written by Ne-Yo entitled "Just Be Happy" as part of the deal to promote their Happy fragrance. Rihanna also recorded a song called "Winning Women" with Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger for Procter & Gamble's female deodorant Secret. In 2007, Rihanna signed with CoverGirl and became a celebrity spokesperson which included appearances on TV commercials and in the Barbados Tourism Authority's tourism commercials. In December 2008, Rihanna contracted with Gucci to appear in their ads for the Tattoo Heart Collection, a special-edition line. In the Gucci handbag ad, Rihanna is seen hanging from a giant hoop, scantily clad in a barely-there white bodysuit and wearing an oversized white Gucci purse. The success of her single, "Umbrella" earned her an endorsement deal with Totes. Her handlers pitched her hit "Umbrella" to Totes and the 41

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song became the soundtrack for commercials in which she starred. On April 8, 2009, it was announced that Rihanna inked a fragrance deal with Jay-Zâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s licensing company Iconic Fragrances.[203] The fragrance is named Reb'l Fleur and was released in 2011. Rihanna was working with her artistic director for Rated R, Simon Henwood, on the book Rihanna. It was released on September 14, 2010. In August 2010 Rihanna began appearing in an Australian television advert for Optus, a position previously held by Pink. In May 2011, Rihanna became a spokeswoman for the German skincare brand Nivea. Rihanna's song "California King Bed" was featured as a part of Nivea's "100 Years of Skincare" commercial campaign.

Philanthropy Rihanna created her Believe Foundation in 2006 to help terminally ill children. Rihanna explained her reasons for starting the foundation saying, "When I was young and I would watch television and I would see all the children suffering, I always said: when I grow up, I want to help." Rihanna is also heavily involved in the marketing of her native country of Barbados. She began by including the flag and broken trident in many of her videos, shooting her album packaging for A Girl Like Me there In September 2007, she became the official face of tourism for Barbados, being included in many of their ad campaigns. She holds the honorary title of Ambassador for Culture and Youth in Barbados. She additionally was honored by the Prime Minister David Thompson, who presented her with several gifts at a national concert on February 20, 2008, in Barbados, called "Rihanna Day". In February 2008, Rihanna thanked and honoured her country during the acceptance speech for her win of "Best Rap/Sung Collaboration" at the Grammy Awards. Although Rihanna is heavily involved in the promotion of her country and works with the government in Barbados to do so, she is often criticized by other Barbadians for everything from her music to her successes and for wearing "skimpy clothes". Rihanna, speaking on one incident, said, "I went to the beach and I had on a one-piece swimsuit with jeans [...] They took the picture and they made it look like a top that was really revealing... There were [...] radio programmes about it. It was a big deal for, like, three 42

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weeks straight – talking about I'm not setting a good example." Rihanna states she was bullied at school. "Having lighter skin wasn’t a problem in my household, but it was when I went to school – which really confused me at first. The harassment continued to my very last day of elementary school." Rihanna has performed a number of concerts to raise funds for both charities and the Foundation and is a 2008 Cartier Love Charity Bracelet Ambassador. She performed at Madonna’s Raising Malawi fundraiser on February 6, 2008, in New York City. After becoming an honorary cultural ambassador for Barbados, Rihanna became involved with DKMS, an international donor network based in Tübingen, Germany, to try to find a donor for Lisa Gershowitz Flynn. The Manhattan attorney had been diagnosed in November with acute myelogenous leukemia. In January 2008, Rihanna contributed in the fight against AIDS when she visited the H&M in New York to support Fashion Against AIDS by presenting her t-shirt design and signing autographs for a limited time with slogans like "Believe" and "Stop and Think." The collection features t-shirts and hoodies designed by Rihanna, Timbaland and other well-known designers, musicians and artists. The line, called Fashion Against AIDS, was launched in February 2008 to raise awareness of the disease among teens and spread awareness about HIV/AIDS. In August 2008, Rihanna and other pop, rock, R&B and country singers such as Carrie Underwood, Ciara, Beyoncé Knowles, Leona Lewis, Mary J. Blige, Mariah Carey, and Fergie recorded the charity single, "Just Stand Up!", the theme song to the anti-cancer campaign Stand Up to Cancer and its theme song. The singers performed the song live on September 5, 2008. Rihanna was also selected as the spokesmodel for Gucci’s first United Nations Children's Fund ad campaign. She appeared in the fashion house’s Tattoo Heart campaign, which premiered in December 2008. Rihanna was photographed in series of special edition print ads with United Nations Children's Fund items, twenty-five percent of sales will benefit the children’s charity.

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On November 19, 2008, Rihanna was enlisted by Gucci's Frida Giannini along with Madonna to light the United Nations Children's Fund Christmas snowflake in New York City at the Grand Army Plaza. In 2008, she became the global representative and the face of the 4th annual Gucci Campaign to Benefit United Nations Children's Fund. The campaign aimed to raise funds for children in Africa through the sale of its Tattoo Heart collection of bags, which launched worldwide on November 19, 2008. Rihanna has been a part of many benefit concerts to help raise money for various illnesses, such as cancer for Hope Rocks. Rihanna performed on January 20, 2009, at the Recording Industry Association of America's Presidential Inauguration Charity Ball to raise money for the world largest anti-hunger organization. On April 2, 2009, Rihanna visited the NYU Medical Center to help look for another bone marrow donor for a young girl named Jasmina Anema. Rihanna first learned about Anema's plight in February 2009, when she saw the moving video Anema's best friend, Isabelle Huurman, and her mother, Karen Detrick, made appealing for donors to save Anema. Rihanna honored Anema's best friend, Isabella, for her efforts for trying to save her best friend at a DKMS Gala on May 7, 2009. Jasmina Anema eventually received her transplant on June 11, 2009, but died on January 27, 2010. In September 2009, Rihanna performed at Jay-Z's "Answer the Call" concert, which paid tribute to the police officers and firefighters who died on the September 11 attacks. In February 2011, Rihanna was scheduled to perform at a charity concert for the Women's Cancer Research Fund, but was forced to pull out at the last minute, due to bronchitis.

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Who are the Black Hebrew Isrealites?

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Black Hebrew Israelites (also Black Hebrews, African Hebrew Israelites, and Hebrew Israelites) are groups of people mostly of Black African ancestry situated mainly in the United States who believe they are descendants of the ancient Israelites. Black Hebrews adhere in varying degrees to the religious beliefs and practices of mainstream Judaism. They are generally not accepted as Jews by the greater Jewish community, and many Black Hebrews consider themselves â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and not mainstream Jews â&#x20AC;&#x201D; to be the only authentic descendants of the ancient Israelites. Many choose to self-identify as Hebrew Israelites or Black Hebrews rather than as Jews. Dozens of Black Hebrew groups were founded during the late 19th and the early 20th centuries. In the mid-1980s, the number of Black Hebrews in the United States was between 25,000 and 40,000. In the 1990s, the Alliance of Black Jews estimated that there were 200,000 African-American Jews, including Black Hebrews and those recognized as Jews by mainstream Jewish organizations.

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Overview While Black Christians traditionally have identified spiritually with the Children of Israel, they never claimed to be descendants of the Israelites. In the late 19th century among some African-Americans, an identification with the ancient Hebrews developed into an identification as ancient Hebrews. One of the first groups of Black Hebrews, the Church of God and Saints of Christ, was founded in 1896. During the following decades, many more Black Hebrew congregations were established. These groups claimed descent from the ancient Israelites. They selected elements of Judaism and adapted them within a structure similar to that of the Black church. The beliefs and practices of Black Hebrew groups vary considerably. The differences are so great that historian James Tinney has suggested the classification of the organizations into three groups: Black Jews, who maintain a Christological perspective and adopt Jewish rituals; Black Hebrews, who are more traditional in their practice of Judaism; and Black Israelites, who are most nationalistic and farthest from traditional Judaism. Nevertheless, Black Hebrew organizations have certain common characteristics. Anthropologist James E. Landing, author of Black Judaism, distinguishes the Black Hebrew movement, which he refers to as Black Judaism, from normative Judaism practiced by people who are Black (black Judaism): Black Judaism is ... a form of institutionalized (congregational) religious expression in which black persons identify themselves as Jews, Israelites, or Hebrews...in a manner that seems unacceptable to the "whites" of the world's Jewish community, primarily because Jews take issue with the various justifications set forth by Black Jews in establishing this identity. Thus "Black Judaism," as defined here, stands distinctly apart from "black Judaism," or that Judaic expression found among black persons that would be acceptable to the world's Jewish community, such as conversion or birth to a recognized Jewish mother. "Black Judaism" has been a social movement; "black Judaism" has been an isolated social phenomenon. 49

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Landing's definition, and its underlying assumptions about race and normative Judaism, have been criticized, but it provides a helpful framework for understanding some of the common traits that various Black Hebrew organizations share.

Groups During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, dozens of Black Hebrew organizations were established. In Harlem alone, at least eight such groups were founded between 1919 and 1931. The Church of the Living God, the Pillar Ground of Truth for All Nations is the oldest known Black Hebrew group and the Church of God and Saints of Christ is one of the largest Black Hebrew organizations. The Commandment Keepers are noted for their adherence to traditional Judaism and the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem are widely known for having moved from the United States to Israel.

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Church of the Living God, the Pillar Ground of Truth for All Nations The oldest known Black Hebrew organization is the Church of the Living God, the Pillar Ground of Truth for All Nations. The group was founded by F. S. Cherry in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in 1886, and later moved to Philadelphia. Theologically, the Church of the Living God mixed elements of Judaism and Christianity, counting the Bible — including the New Testament — and the Talmud as essential scriptures. The rituals of Cherry’s flock incorporated many Jewish practices and prohibitions alongside some Christian traditions. For example, during prayer the men wore skullcaps and congregants faced east. In addition, members of the Church were not permitted to eat pork. Prayers were accompanied by musical instruments and gospel singing. After Cherry's death, members of the church believed he had left temporarily and would reappear soon in spirit to lead the church through his son.

Church of God and Saints of Christ

Left: Church of God and Saints of Christ

Former headquarters of the Church of God and Saints of Christ in Washington, D.C. The building is now known as First Tabernacle Beth El and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Church of God and Saints of Christ was established in Lawrence, Kansas, in 1896 by William Saunders Crowdy. The group established its headquarters in Philadelphia in 1899, and Crowdy later relocated to Washington, D.C., in 1903. After Crowdy's death in 1908, the church continued to grow under the leadership of William Henry Plummer, who moved the organization's headquarters to its permanent location in Belleville, Virginia, in 1921. In 1936, the Church of God and Saints of Christ had more than 200 "tabernacles" (congregations) and 37,000 members. Howard Zebulun Plummer succeeded his father and became head of the organization in 1931.[27] His son, Levi Solomon Plummer, became the church's leader in 1975. Since 2001, the Church of God and Saints of Christ has been led by Rabbi Jehu A. Crowdy, Jr., a great-grandson of William Saunders Crowdy. As of 2005, it had fifty tabernacles in the United States and dozens in Africa. 51

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The Church of God and Saints of Christ describes itself as "the oldest African-American congregation in the United States that adheres to the tenets of Judaism". It teaches that all Jews had been black originally, and that African-Americans are descendants of the lost tribes of Israel. Members believe that Jesus was neither God nor the son of God, but rather an adherent to Judaism and a prophet. They also consider William Saunders Crowdy to be a prophet. The Church of God and Saints of Christ synthesizes rituals from both Judaism and Christianity. They have adopted rites drawn from both the Old Testament and New Testament. Its Jewish observances include circumcision of newborn boys, use of the Hebrew calendar, wearing of yarmulkes, observance of Saturday as the Sabbath, and celebration of Passover. Its New Testament rites include baptism (immersion) and footwashing, both of which have Old Testament origins.

Commandment Keepers Left: Wentworth Arthur Matthew holding a Torah scroll.

Wentworth Arthur Matthew founded the Commandment Keepers Congregation in Harlem in 1919. Matthew was influenced by the non-black Jews he met and by Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association. Garvey used the Biblical Jews in exile as a metaphor for black people in North America. One of the accomplishments of Garvey's movement was to strengthen the connection between black Americans and Africa, Ethiopia in particular, and when Matthew learned about the Beta Israel â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Ethiopian Jews â&#x20AC;&#x201D; he identified with them. The Commandment Keepers follow traditional Jewish practice and observe Jewish holidays. Members observe Jewish dietary laws, circumcise newborn boys and celebrate bar mitzvah, and their synagogue has a partition to separate men and woman during worship. The Commandment Keepers believe they are descendants of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. Matthew taught that "the Black man is a Jew" and "all genuine Jews are Black men", but he valued non-black Jews as those who had preserved Judaism over the centuries. Matthew maintained cordial ties with non-black Jewish leaders in New York and frequently invited them to worship at his synagogue. 52

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Matthew established the Ethiopian Hebrew Rabbinical College (later renamed the Israelite Rabbinical Academy). He ordained more than 20 rabbis, who went on to lead congregations throughout the United States and the Caribbean. He remained the leader of the Commandment Keepers in Harlem, and in 1962 the congregation moved to a landmark building on 123rd Street. Matthew died in 1973, sparking an internal conflict over who would succeed him as head of the Harlem congregation. Shortly before his death Matthew named his grandson, David Matthew Doré, the new spiritual leader. Doré was 16 years old at the time. In 1975, the synagogue's board elected Rabbi Willie White to be its leader. Rabbi Doré occasionally conducted services at the synagogue until the early 1980s, when White had Doré and some other members locked out of the building. Membership declined throughout the 1990s and by 2004 only a few dozen people belonged to the synagogue. In 2007 the Commandment Keepers sold the building that housed their synagogue while various factions among former members sued one another. Beside the Harlem group, there are eight or ten Commandment Keeper congregations in the New York area and others throughout North America and in Israel. Since 2000, seven rabbis have graduated from the Israelite Rabbinical Academy founded by Matthew.[42]

African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem Left: African Hebrew Israelites speak to visitors in Dimona.

Ben Ammi Ben Israel established the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem in Chicago, Illinois, in 1966. In 1969, after a sojourn in Liberia, Ben Ammi and about 30 Hebrew Israelites moved to Israel. Over the next 20 years nearly 600 more members left 53

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the United States for Israel. As of 2006, about 2,500 Hebrew Israelites live in Dimona and two other towns in the Negev region of Israel, where they are widely referred to as Black Hebrews. In addition, there are Hebrew Israelite communities in several major American cities, including Chicago, St. Louis, and Washington, D.C. The Black Hebrews believe they are descended from members of the Tribe of Judah who were exiled from the Land of Israel after the Romans destroyed the Second Temple in 70 CE. The group incorporates elements of African American culture into their interpretation of the Bible, and they do not recognize rabbinical Jewish interpretations such as the Talmud. The Black Hebrews observe Shabbat and biblically ordained Jewish holidays such as Yom Kippur and Passover. Men wear tzitzit on their African print shirts, women follow the biblical laws concerning menstruation, and newborn boys are circumcised. In accordance with their interpretation of the Bible, the Black Hebrews follow a strictly vegan diet and wear only natural fabrics. Most men have more than one wife, and birth control is not permitted. When the first Black Hebrews arrived in Israel in 1969, they claimed citizenship under the Law of Return, which gives eligible Jews immediate citizenship. The Israeli government ruled in 1973 that the group did not qualify for automatic citizenship, and the Black Hebrews were denied work permits and state benefits. The group responded by accusing the Israeli government of racist discrimination. In 1981, a group of American civil rights activist led by Bayard Rustin investigated and concluded that racism was not the cause of Black Hebrews' situation. No official action was taken to return the Black Hebrews to the United States, but some individual members were deported for working illegally. Some Black Hebrews renounced their American citizenship to try to prevent 54

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more deportations. In 1990, Illinois legislators helped negotiate an agreement that resolved the Black Hebrews' legal status in Israel. Members of the group are permitted to work and have access to housing and social services. The Black Hebrews reclaimed their American citizenship and have received aid from the U.S. government that helped them build a school and additional housing. In 2003 the agreement was revised, and the Black Hebrews were granted permanent resident status. In 2009, Elyakim Ben-Israel became the first Black Hebrew to receive Israeli citizenship. The Israeli government said that more Black Hebrews may be granted citizenship. The Black Hebrews have become well-known for their gospel choir, which tours throughout Israel and the United States. The group owns restaurants in several Israeli cities. In 2003 the Black Hebrews garnered much public attention when singer Whitney Houston visited them in Dimona. In 2006, Eddie Butler, a Black Hebrew, was chosen by the Israeli public to represent Israel in the Eurovision Song Contest.

Allegations of black supremacy and racism In late 2008, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) described as black supremacist what it called "the extremist fringe of the Hebrew Israelite movement". It wrote that the members of such groups "believe that Jews are devilish impostors and ... openly condemn whites as evil personified, deserving only death or slavery". The SPLC also said that "most Hebrew Israelites are neither explicitly racist nor anti-Semitic and do not advocate violence". The Black Hebrew groups characterized as black supremacist by the SPLC include the Nation of Yahweh and the Israelite Church of God in Jesus Christ. Also, the AntiDefamation League has written that the "12 Tribes of Israel" website, maintained by a Black Hebrew group, promotes black supremacy.

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Words of Inspiration, Inspired STAR OF STARS Star white, star light up in the sky shinning bright Looking so beautiful, in the night I don't know if I should twinkle my eye Or make a wish on you Anyway it goes i hope my dream's, comes true Every which way i turn and go You seem to follow me real slow Like you are watching me I see As I look at you so hard You have four points on you One on the top One on the bottom And one on each side You have been called many of thing's Being a star, some say you are a dipper people look for and see at night, Some say you are a light, Shinny so far, but yet so bright. In the bible God called it the Star of David, which i believe. Some say the four point's stand for Love, joy, peace and hope. Giving people faith, where they have no hope. You are most beautiful, when you light up the sky and it glows I wonder, why God set you so high Maybe he wanted the small children to be able to look up in the sky And see the star's in their eyes The stars are so bright as they light up the night God set the stars up there for a reason I guess because each point on the star stand's for a season Maybe god wanted to lighten your pathway so people could see how to get to heaven when they were lost No one is blinder than he or she who canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t see Maybe that's why God set the stars up so high And not in a tree So your view can always be clear To look up there And know where you want to be joya may be contacted at iamjoya@gmail.com

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Author Jo LenaUrban Johnson a mission for Professionalon Lifestyle

Good ... Absolute Good!

By Raaw'el In order to BE something You must DO something

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"things U do" The things you do makes me lose myself in you Extra slow is the way to go that way, I can savor every morsel, which further let's you know that I'm here to support you you're too good a man to let go neither of us planned this its kinda happenstance. We've both been wronged which doesnt make it right my plight is whether to release you into the darkness at night Your warmth surrounds me, your gaze is clear, from day one, the things you do wards off any fear, that attempts to attack me or what we've become from day one your sensitivity & compassion is what won my heart It's a whirlwind a secret brewing from within a romance for just us...that comes with a spin...a juicy chapter that excites me every day that we live life is too short thoughts of you is what gives, me courage to follow my heart & my dreams... like you our desire is to be true Yes, this kind of connection is just for us two You're the yin to my yang the groove to my thang we dance to our own music the emotion we exchange is magical for far more reasons than one the realness and raw energy draws us closer neither of us can run from the truth the edginess, the passion, the flames that burn in our minds of the respect that we've gained Daily, the more I learn you it's clear the things you do make me lose myself in you your kiss is refreshing a new day is near! 60

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Soul singer Howard Tate dies in NJ apartment at 72

Soul singer Howard Tate has died in his New Jersey apartment a decade after a career resurrection that followed years of tragedy and obscurity. A spokesman for the Burlington County medical examiner says Tate was 72 when he died Friday in Burlington City. Tate was born in Macon, Ga., and grew up in Philadelphia. In the late 1960s and early '70s he had three top 20 R&B hits, including "Get It While You Can," written by his longtime producer Jerry Ragovoy and made more famous by Janis Joplin. But Tate fell into drug addiction and ended up homeless. Ragovoy believed he had died. Tate made a comeback a decade ago -- again with Ragovoy producing. His 2003 release "Rediscovered" was nominated for a Grammy for best contemporary blues album. 61

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Troy Davis' sister has died, NAACP confirms

Martina Davis-Correia, the sister of late cause celebre death row inmate Troy Davis, has died, NAACP senior communications associate Derek Turner confirmed. Davis-Correia battled cancer, but helped take her brother's case around the globe, maintaining there was too much doubt in the details of his murder conviction to allow for his execution. Davis died by lethal injection on Sept. 21 at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson, Ga. Between hospitalizations as she fought her disease, Davis-Correia addressed groups and took part in rallies globally to draw attention to the case. Davis, 42 when he died, had been convicted in 1991 of the 1989 shooting death of Savannah, Ga., police officer Mark MacPhail. But Davis-Correia and another sister of Davis', Kimberly Davis, worked with the NAACP and Amnesty International in maintaining to people worldwide that several witnesses in Davis' murder trial had recanted testimony. The Davises' mother, Virginia Davis, died a few months before the execution. 62

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Stanford assistant coach Chester McGlockton dies

STANFORD, Calif. (AP) - Stanford assistant coach and four-time Pro Bowl defensive lineman Chester McGlockton has died. The school said Wednesday that McGlockton died overnight. He was 42. The cause of death was not immediately announced. A native of Whiteville, N.C., McGlockton starred at Clemson before being selected 16th overall by the Los Angeles Raiders in 1992. He played 12 seasons in the NFL with the Raiders, Kansas City Chiefs, Denver Broncos and New York Jets. He made all four of his Pro Bowl appearances while with the Raiders from 1994-1997. McGlockton was in his second season as a defensive assistant on the Stanford coaching staff. He is survived by his wife, Zina, and their two children. 63

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6 Ways to Attract Customers via Social Media By Amanda Miller Littlejohn

When was the last time you picked up the Yellow Pages to find a reputable product or service in your area. Chances are, you canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t even remember. When you needed to find someone to find a new florist or car mechanic you did one of two things. You either asked a friend or family member for a referral, or you turned to the Internet. 64

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Which is why it is critical for business owners to have strong online identities; branding yourself online can help your potential customers find you where they’re looking. If you’re a business owner who is still asking “Why Twitter?” that is one reason: to increase your online visibility. Think about it: the tweets and photos and status updates all create a massive digital footprint that tells potential customers what you do. Each time you post on your blog, update your status on Twitter, Facebook, or Slideshare, you are leaving virtual breadcrumbs leading potential customers back to your website to learn more about your business. As you leave your virtual trail, remember to add something to the larger conversation. Choose the conversations you want to be a part of and take the lead. Inform your contemporaries on the latest products to hit the market. Showcase the latest methods. Write your own analysis of the most cutting-edge research. Once you capture your audience, continue to feed them helpful links to videos, articles, blog posts—valuable information that they otherwise would have missed. Make your followers come to you for information and see you as an indispensable resource. Do this by being relevant and timely, and filling a need; by leaving behind information that you would want to stumble upon yourself. Here are six specific ways to create an online trail that will lead your ideal customers to you. Start a Twitterchat. Research a hashtag and make sure no one is using it, establish a time and begin promoting it. Successful chats occur weekly and are between 1 and 3 hours long depending on the time of day. Create a community that you want to be a part of. A great Twitter chat to observe is Melinda Emerson’s (@SmallBizLady) weekly chat #smallbizchat. Produce a Series of How-To Videos. If you don’t want to write, start a regular videocast where you talk about the issues about which you have expertise. This works to your advantage since most people are visual and they’ll spend the time to watch your video before they read a long post. Add your personality and make it your take on the problems facing your industry. Think of things that potential customers would like to know how to do. Make your series fill a need. A hardware store owner might produce a video about How to weatherize your windows for winter. A fitness trainer could produce How to get a workout at your desk.

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Blog Blog Blog. If you want to be considered an expert, you have to have to have a blog. Especially if you provide a service, your blog can really help you stand apart from the competition when a potential client is conducting a preliminary internet search. So much of our personalities can shine through in a blog; why not showcase that and show a prospect who you are and what it would be like to work with you? Get those blind date jitters out of the way early. Write about the area of which you have expertise and position yourself as the expert on the subject. Once you blog, make sure you tag your posts with keywords to improve your search engine optimization (SEO). Start a LinkedIn Group If you are already talking about issues and drawing people into a subject about which you are passionate, you may consider starting a LinkedIn group to organize professionals around this topic. Note: this works better for topics and issues rather than products and services. However, you can start a group and establish yourself as an expert on an issue or topic (healthy eating and access to healthy foods) to find people who may like to purchase your products and services (healthy eating seminars, healthy food recipes, etc.) Use Keywords in Your Tweets. Don’t quite have time to set up a twitter chat? Tag your tweets with words that communicate what you do and what you want to be known for. If you don’t have self-authored blog posts to tweet, tweet news articles you’ve read about important happenings around a topic of interest or your expertise. Since I make my living as a PR and social media expert, I also post articles and tag them #PR and #socialmedia. But I advise my clients to find their 3-5 core tags and use them to tweet up a storm. Write a monthly email newsletter focused on your industry. Use your blog to grow your subscriber list, and promote your newsletter through your website. Promote relevant events, products and services you’re offering for the month, but focus on providing helpful information first. www.blackenterprise.com

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Full text of President Obamaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s economic speech in Osawatomie, Kans. Published: December 6 As Prepared for Delivery --

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Good afternoon. I want to start by thanking a few of the folks who’ve joined us today. We’ve got the mayor of Osawatomie, Phil Dudley; your superintendent, Gary French; the principal of Osawatomie High, Doug Chisam. And I’ve brought your former governor, who’s now doing an outstanding job as our Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius. It is great to be back in the state of Kansas. As many of you know, I’ve got roots here. I’m sure you’re all familiar with the Obamas of Osawatomie. Actually, I like to say that I got my name from my father, but I got my accent – and my values – from my mother. She was born in Wichita. Her mother grew up in Augusta. And her father was from El Dorado. So my Kansas roots run deep. My grandparents served during World War II -- he as a soldier in Patton’s Army, she as a worker on a bomber assembly line. Together, they shared the optimism of a nation that triumphed over a Depression and fascism. They believed in an America where hard work paid off, responsibility was rewarded, and anyone could make it if they tried -- no matter who you were, where you came from, or how you started out. These values gave rise to the largest middle class and the strongest economy the world has ever known. It was here, in America, that the most productive workers and innovative companies turned out the best products on Earth, and every American shared in that pride and success -- from those in executive suites to middle management to those on the factory floor. If you gave it your all, you’d take enough home to raise your family, send your kids to school, have your health care covered, and put a little away for retirement. Today, we are still home to the world’s most productive workers and innovative companies. But for most Americans, the basic bargain that made this country great has eroded. Long before the recession hit, hard work stopped paying off for too many 69

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people. Fewer and fewer of the folks who contributed to the success of our economy actually benefitted from that success. Those at the very top grew wealthier from their incomes and investments than ever before. But everyone else struggled with costs that were growing and paychecks that weren’t – and too many families found themselves racking up more and more debt just to keep up. For many years, credit cards and home equity loans papered over the harsh realities of this new economy. But in 2008, the house of cards collapsed. We all know the story by now: Mortgages sold to people who couldn’t afford them, or sometimes even understand them. Banks and investors allowed to keep packaging the risk and selling it off. Huge bets – and huge bonuses – made with other people’s money on the line. Regulators who were supposed to warn us about the dangers of all this, but looked the other way or didn’t have the authority to look at all. It was wrong. It combined the breathtaking greed of a few with irresponsibility across the system. And it plunged our economy and the world into a crisis from which we are still fighting to recover. It claimed the jobs, homes, and the basic security of millions – innocent, hard-working Americans who had met their responsibilities, but were still left holding the bag. Ever since, there has been a raging debate over the best way to restore growth and prosperity; balance and fairness. Throughout the country, it has sparked protests and political movements – from the Tea Party to the people who have been occupying the streets of New York and other cities. It’s left Washington in a near-constant state of gridlock. And it’s been the topic of heated and sometimes colorful discussion among the men and women who are running for president. But this isn’t just another political debate. This is the defining issue of our time. This is a make or break moment for the middle class, and all those who are fighting to get into the middle class. At stake is whether this will be a country where working people can earn enough to raise a family, build a modest savings, own a home, and secure their retirement. Now, in the midst of this debate, there are some who seem to be suffering from a kind of collective amnesia. After all that’s happened, after the worst economic crisis since the 70

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Great Depression, they want to return to the same practices that got us into this mess. In fact, they want to go back to the same policies that have stacked the deck against middle-class Americans for too many years. Their philosophy is simple: we are better off when everyone is left to fend for themselves and play by their own rules.

Well, I’m here to say they are wrong. I’m here to reaffirm my deep conviction that we are greater together than we are on our own. I believe that this country succeeds when everyone gets a fair shot, when everyone does their fair share, and when everyone plays by the same rules. Those aren’t Democratic or Republican values; 1% values or 99% values. They’re American values, and we have to reclaim them. You see, this isn’t the first time America has faced this choice. At the turn of the last century, when a nation of farmers was transitioning to become the world’s industrial giant, we had to decide: would we settle for a country where most of the new railroads and factories were controlled by a few giant monopolies that kept prices high and wages low? Would we allow our citizens and even our children to work ungodly hours in conditions that were unsafe and unsanitary? Would we restrict education to the privileged few? Because some people thought massive inequality and exploitation was just the price of progress. Theodore Roosevelt disagreed. He was the Republican son of a wealthy family. He praised what the titans of industry had done to create jobs and grow the economy. He believed then what we know is true today: that the free market is the greatest force for 71

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economic progress in human history. It’s led to a prosperity and standard of living unmatched by the rest of the world. But Roosevelt also knew that the free market has never been a free license to take whatever you want from whoever you can. It only works when there are rules of the road to ensure that competition is fair, open, and honest. And so he busted up monopolies, forcing those companies to compete for customers with better services and better prices. And today, they still must. He fought to make sure businesses couldn’t profit by exploiting children, or selling food or medicine that wasn’t safe. And today, they still can’t. In 1910, Teddy Roosevelt came here, to Osawatomie, and laid out his vision for what he called a New Nationalism. “Our country,” he said, “…means nothing unless it means the triumph of a real democracy…of an economic system under which each man shall be guaranteed the opportunity to show the best that there is in him.” For this, Roosevelt was called a radical, a socialist, even a communist. But today, we are a richer nation and a stronger democracy because of what he fought for in his last campaign: an eight hour work day and a minimum wage for women; insurance for the unemployed, the elderly, and those with disabilities; political reform and a progressive income tax. Today, over one hundred years later, our economy has gone through another transformation. Over the last few decades, huge advances in technology have allowed businesses to do more with less, and made it easier for them to set up shop and hire workers anywhere in the world. And many of you know firsthand the painful disruptions this has caused for a lot of Americans. Factories where people thought they would retire suddenly picked up and went overseas, where the workers were cheaper. Steel mills that needed 1,000 employees are now able to do the same work with 100, so that layoffs were too often permanent, not just a temporary part of the business cycle. These changes didn’t just affect blue-collar workers. If you were a bank teller or a phone operator or a travel agent, you saw many in your profession replaced by ATMs or the internet. Today, even higher-skilled jobs like accountants and middle management can be outsourced to countries like China and India. And if you’re someone whose job can be done cheaper by a computer or someone in another country, you don’t have a lot of leverage with your employer when it comes to asking for better wages and benefits – especially since fewer Americans today are part of a union. Now, just as there was in Teddy Roosevelt’s time, there’s been a certain crowd in Washington for the last few decades who respond to this economic challenge with the same old tune. “The market will take care of everything,” they tell us. If only we cut more regulations and cut more taxes – especially for the wealthy – our economy will grow 72

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stronger. Sure, there will be winners and losers. But if the winners do really well, jobs and prosperity will eventually trickle down to everyone else. And even if prosperity doesn’t trickle down, they argue, that’s the price of liberty. It’s a simple theory – one that speaks to our rugged individualism and healthy skepticism of too much government. It fits well on a bumper sticker. Here’s the problem: It doesn’t work. It’s never worked. It didn’t work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression. It’s not what led to the incredible post-war boom of the 50s and 60s. And it didn’t work when we tried it during the last decade. Remember that in those years, in 2001 and 2003, Congress passed two of the most expensive tax cuts for the wealthy in history, and what did they get us? The slowest job growth in half a century. Massive deficits that have made it much harder to pay for the investments that built this country and provided the basic security that helped millions of Americans reach and stay in the middle class – things like education and infrastructure; science and technology; Medicare and Social Security. Remember that in those years, thanks to some of the same folks who are running Congress now, we had weak regulation and little oversight, and what did that get us? Insurance companies that jacked up people’s premiums with impunity, and denied care to the patients who were sick. Mortgage lenders that tricked families into buying homes they couldn’t afford. A financial sector where irresponsibility and lack of basic oversight nearly destroyed our entire economy. We simply cannot return to this brand of your-on-your-own economics if we’re serious about rebuilding the middle class in this country. We know that it doesn’t result in a strong economy. It results in an economy that invests too little in its people and its 73

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future. It doesn’t result in a prosperity that trickles down. It results in a prosperity that’s enjoyed by fewer and fewer of our citizens. Look at the statistics. In the last few decades, the average income of the top one percent has gone up by more than 250%, to $1.2 million per year. For the top one hundredth of one percent, the average income is now $27 million per year. The typical CEO who used to earn about 30 times more than his or her workers now earns 110 times more. And yet, over the last decade, the incomes of most Americans have actually fallen by about six percent. This kind of inequality – a level we haven’t seen since the Great Depression – hurts us all. When middle-class families can no longer afford to buy the goods and services that businesses are selling, it drags down the entire economy, from top to bottom. America was built on the idea of broadbased prosperity – that’s why a CEO like Henry Ford made it his mission to pay his workers enough so that they could buy the cars they made. It’s also why a recent study showed that countries with less inequality tend to have stronger and steadier economic growth over the long run. Inequality also distorts our democracy. It gives an outsized voice to the few who can afford high-priced lobbyists and unlimited campaign contributions, and runs the risk of selling out our democracy to the highest bidder. And it leaves everyone else rightly suspicious that the system in Washington is rigged against them – that our elected representatives aren’t looking out for the interests of most Americans. More fundamentally, this kind of gaping inequality gives lie to the promise at the very heart of America: that this is the place where you can make it if you try. We tell people that in this country, even if you’re born with nothing, hard work can get you into the middle class; and that your children will have the chance to do even better than you. That’s why immigrants from around the world flocked to our shores. And yet, over the last few decades, the rungs on the ladder of opportunity have grown farther and farther apart, and the middle class has shrunk. A few years after World War II, a child who was born into poverty had a slightly better than 50-50 chance of 74

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becoming middle class as an adult. By 1980, that chance fell to around 40%. And if the trend of rising inequality over the last few decades continues, it’s estimated that a child born today will only have a 1 in 3 chance of making it to the middle class. It’s heartbreaking enough that there are millions of working families in this country who are now forced to take their children to food banks for a decent meal. But the idea that those children might not have a chance to climb out of that situation and back into the middle class, no matter how hard they work? That’s inexcusable. It’s wrong. It flies in the face of everything we stand for. Fortunately, that’s not a future we have to accept. Because there’s another view about how we build a strong middle class in this country – a view that’s truer to our history; a vision that’s been embraced by people of both parties for more than two hundred years. It’s not a view that we should somehow turn back technology or put up walls around America. It’s not a view that says we should punish profit or success or pretend that government knows how to fix all society’s problems. It’s a view that says in America, we are greater together – when everyone engages in fair play, everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share. So what does that mean for restoring middle-class security in today’s economy? It starts by making sure that everyone in America gets a fair shot at success. The truth is, we’ll never be able to compete with other countries when it comes to who’s best at letting their businesses pay the lowest wages or pollute as much as they want. That’s a race to the bottom that we can’t win – and shouldn’t want to win. Those countries don’t have a strong middle-class. They don’t have our standard of living. The race we want to win – the race we can win – is a race to the top; the race for good jobs that pay well and offer middle-class security. Businesses will create those jobs in countries with the highest-skilled, highest-educated workers; the most advanced transportation and communication; the strongest commitment to research and technology. The world is shifting to an innovation economy. And no one does innovation better than America. No one has better colleges and universities. No one has a greater diversity of talent and ingenuity. No one’s workers or entrepreneurs are more driven or daring. The things that have always been our strengths match up perfectly with the demands of this moment. But we need to meet the moment. We need to up our game. And we need to remember that we can only do that together.

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where everyone has the chance to go.

It starts by making education a national mission – government and businesses; parents and citizens. In this economy, a higher education is the surest route to the middle class. The unemployment rate for Americans with a college degree or more is about half the national average. Their income is twice as high as those who don’t have a high school diploma. We shouldn’t be laying off good teachers right now – we should be hiring them. We shouldn’t be expecting less of our schools – we should be demanding more. We shouldn’t be making it harder to afford college – we should be a country

In today’s innovation economy, we also need a world-class commitment to science, research, and the next generation of high-tech manufacturing. Our factories and their workers shouldn’t be idle. We should be giving people the chance to get new skills and training at community colleges, so they can learn to make wind turbines and semiconductors and high-powered batteries. And by the way – if we don’t have an economy built on bubbles and financial speculation, our best and brightest won’t all gravitate towards careers in banking and finance. Because if we want an economy that’s built to last, we need more of those young people in science and engineering. This country shouldn’t be known for bad debt and phony profits. We should be known for creating and selling products all over the world that are stamped with three proud words: Made in America. Today, manufacturers and other companies are setting up shop in places with the best infrastructure to ship their products, move their workers, and communicate with the rest of the world. That’s why the over one million construction workers who lost their jobs when the housing market collapsed shouldn’t be sitting at home with nothing to do. 76

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They should be rebuilding our roads and bridges; laying down faster railroads and broadband; modernizing our schools – all the things other countries are already doing to attract good jobs and businesses to their shores. Yes, businesses, not government, will always be the primary generator of good jobs with incomes that lift people into the middle class and keep them there. But as a nation, we have always come together, through our government, to help create the conditions where both workers and businesses can succeed. Historically, that hasn’t been a partisan idea. Franklin Roosevelt worked with Democrats and Republicans to give veterans of World War II, including my grandfather, the chance to go to college on the GI Bill. It was Republican President Dwight Eisenhower, a proud son of Kansas, who started the interstate highway system and doubled-down on science and research to stay ahead of the Soviets. Of course, those productive investments cost money. And so we’ve also paid for these investments by asking everyone to do their fair share. If we had unlimited resources, no one would ever have to pay any taxes and we’d never have to cut any spending. But we don’t have unlimited resources. And so we have to set priorities. If we want a strong middle class, then our tax code must reflect our values. We have to make choices. Today that choice is very clear. To reduce our deficit, I’ve already signed nearly $1 trillion of spending cuts into law, and proposed trillions more – including reforms that would lower the cost of Medicare and Medicaid. But in order to actually close the deficit and get our fiscal house in order, we have to decide what our priorities are. Most immediately, we need to extend a payroll tax cut that’s set to expire at the end of this month. If we don’t do that, 160 million Americans will see their taxes go up by an average of $1,000, and it would badly weaken our recovery. But in the long term, we have to rethink our tax system more fundamentally. We have to ask ourselves: Do we want to make the investments we need in things like education, and research, and high-tech manufacturing? Or do we want to keep in place the tax breaks for the wealthiest 77

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Americans in our country? Because we can’t afford to do both. That’s not politics. That’s just math. So far, most of the Republicans in Washington have refused, under any circumstances, to ask the wealthiest Americans to go the same tax rates they were paying when Bill Clinton was president. Now, keep in mind, when President Clinton first proposed these tax increases, folks in Congress predicted they would kill jobs and lead to another recession. Instead, our economy created nearly 23 million jobs and we eliminated the deficit. Today, the wealthiest Americans are paying the lowest taxes in over half a century. This isn’t like in the early 50s, when the top tax rate was over 90%, or even the early 80s, when it was about 70%. Under President Clinton, the top rate was only about 39%. Today, thanks to loopholes and shelters, a quarter of all millionaires now pay lower tax rates than millions of middle-class households. Some billionaires have a tax rate as low as 1%. One percent. This is the height of unfairness. It is wrong that in the United States of America, a teacher or a nurse or a construction worker who earns $50,000 should pay a higher tax rate than somebody pulling in $50 million. It is wrong for Warren Buffett’s secretary to pay a higher tax rate than Warren Buffett. And he agrees with me. So do most Americans – Democrats, Independents, and Republicans. And I know that many of our wealthiest citizens would agree to contribute a little more if it meant reducing the deficit and strengthening the economy that made their success possible. This isn’t about class warfare. This is about the nation’s welfare. It’s about making choices that benefit not just the people who’ve done fantastically well over the last few decades, but that benefits the middle class, and those fighting to get to the middle class, and the economy as a whole. Finally, a strong middle class can only exist in an economy where everyone plays by the same rules, from Wall Street to Main Street. As infuriating as it was for all of us, we rescued our major banks from collapse, not only because a full blown financial meltdown would have sent us into a second Depression, but because we need a strong, healthy financial sector in this country. But part of the deal was that we would not go back to business as usual. That’s why last year we put in place new rules of the road that refocus the financial sector on this core purpose: getting capital to the entrepreneurs with the best ideas, and financing to millions of families who want to buy a home or send their kids to college. We’re not all the way there yet, and the banks are fighting us every inch of the way. But already, some of these reforms are being implemented. If you’re a big bank or risky financial institution, you’ll have to write out a “living will” that details exactly how you’ll pay the bills if you fail, so that taxpayers are never again on the hook for Wall Street’s mistakes. 78

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There are also limits on the size of banks and new abilities for regulators to dismantle a firm that goes under. The new law bans banks from making risky bets with their customers’ deposits, and takes away big bonuses and paydays from failed CEOs, while giving shareholders a say on executive salaries. All that is being put in place as we speak. Now, unless you’re a financial institution whose business model is built on breaking the law, cheating consumers, or making risky bets that could damage the entire economy, you have nothing to fear from these new rules. My grandmother worked as a banker for most of her life, and I know that the vast majority of bankers and financial service professionals want to do right by their customers. They want to have rules in place that don’t put them at a disadvantage for doing the right thing. And yet, Republicans in Congress are already fighting as hard as they can to make sure these rules aren’t enforced. I’ll give you one example. For the first time in history, the reform we passed puts in place a consumer watchdog who is charged with protecting everyday Americans from being taken advantage of by mortgage lenders, payday lenders or debt collectors. The man we nominated for the post, Richard Cordray, is a former Attorney General of Ohio who has the support of most Attorneys General, both Democrat and Republican, throughout the country. But the Republicans in the Senate refuse to let him do his job. Why? Does anyone here think the problem that led to our financial crisis was too much oversight of mortgage lenders or debt collectors? Of course not. Every day we go without a consumer watchdog in place is another day when a student, or a senior citizen, or member of our Armed Forces could be tricked into a loan they can’t afford – something that happens all the time. Financial institutions have plenty of lobbyists looking out for their interests. Consumers deserve to have someone whose job it is to look out for them. I intend to make sure they do, and I will veto any effort to delay, defund, or dismantle the new rules we put in place.

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We shouldn’t be weakening oversight and accountability. We should be strengthening them. Here’s another example. Too often, we’ve seen Wall Street firms violating major anti-fraud laws because the penalties are too weak and there’s no price for being a repeat offender. No more. I’ll be calling for legislation that makes these penalties count – so that firms don’t see punishment for breaking the law as just the price of doing business. The fact is, this crisis has left a deficit of trust between Main Street and Wall Street. And major banks that were rescued by the taxpayers have an obligation to go the extra mile in helping to close that deficit. At minimum, they should be remedying past mortgage abuses that led to the financial crisis, and working to keep responsible homeowners in their home. We’re going to keep pushing them to provide more time for unemployed homeowners to look for work without having to worry about immediately losing their house. The big banks should increase access to refinancing opportunities to borrowers who have yet to benefit from historically low interest rates. And they should recognize that precisely because these steps are in the interest of middleclass families and the broader economy, they will also be in the banks’ own long-term financial interest. Investing in things like education that give everybody a chance to succeed. A tax code that makes sure everybody pays their fair share. And laws that make sure everybody follows the rules. That’s what will transform our economy. That’s what will grow our middle class again. In the end, rebuilding this economy based on fair play, a fair shot, and a fair share will require all of us to see the stake we have in each other’s success. And it will require all of us to take some responsibility to that success. It will require parents to get more involved in their children’s education, students to study harder, and some workers to start studying all over again. It will require greater responsibility from homeowners to not take out mortgages they can’t afford, and remember that if something seems too good to be true, it probably is. 80

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It will require those of us in public service to make government more efficient, effective, and responsive to people’s needs. That’s why we’re cutting programs we don’t need, to pay for those we do. That’s why we’ve made hundreds of regulatory reforms that will save businesses billions of dollars. That’s why we’re not just throwing money at education, but challenging schools to come up with the most innovative reforms and the best results. And it will require American business leaders to understand that their obligations don’t just end with their shareholders. Andy Grove, the former CEO of Intel put it best: “There’s another obligation I feel personally,” he said, “given that everything I’ve achieved in my career and a lot of what Intel has achieved…were made possible by a climate of democracy, an economic climate and investment climate provided by…the United States.” This broader obligation can take different forms. At a time when the cost of hiring workers in China is rising rapidly, it should mean more CEOs deciding that it’s time to bring jobs back to the United States – not just because it’s good for business, but because it’s good for the country that made their business and their personal success possible. I think about the Big Three Auto companies who, during recent negotiations, agreed to create more jobs and cars in America; who decided to give bonuses, not just to their executives, but to all their employees – so that everyone was invested in the company’s success. I think about a company based in Warroad, Minnesota called Marvin Windows and Doors. During the recession, Marvin’s competitors closed dozens of plants and let go hundreds of workers. But Marvin didn’t lay off a single one of their four thousand or so employees. In fact, they’ve only laid off workers once in over a hundred years. Mr. Marvin’s grandfather even kept his eight employees during the Depression. When times get tough, the workers agree to give up some perks and pay, and so do the owners. As one owner said, “You can’t grow if you’re cutting your lifeblood – and that’s the skills and experience your workforce delivers.” For the CEO, it’s about the 81

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community: “These are people we went to school with,” he said. “We go to church with them. We see them in the same restaurant. Indeed, a lot of us have married local girls and boys. We could be anywhere. But we are in Warroad.” That’s how America was built. That’s why we’re the greatest nation on Earth. That’s what our greatest companies understand. Our success has never just been about survival of the fittest. It’s been about building a nation where we’re all better off. We pull together, we pitch in, and we do our part, believing that hard work will pay off; that responsibility will be rewarded; and that our children will inherit a nation where those values live on. And it is that belief that rallied thousands of Americans to Osawatomie – maybe even some of your ancestors – on a rain-soaked day more than a century ago. By train, by wagon, on buggy, bicycle, and foot, they came to hear the vision of a man who loved this country, and was determined to perfect it. “We are all Americans,” Teddy Roosevelt told them that day. “Our common interests are as broad as the continent.” In the final years of his life, Roosevelt took that same message all across this country, from tiny Osawatomie to the heart of New York City, believing that no matter where he went, or who he was talking to, all would benefit from a country in which everyone gets a fair chance. Well into our third century as a nation, we have grown and changed in many ways since Roosevelt’s time. The world is faster. The playing field is larger. The challenges are more complex. But what hasn’t changed – what can never change – are the values that got us this far. We still have a stake in each other’s success. We still believe that this should be a place where you can make it if you try. And we still believe, in the words of the man who called for a New Nationalism all those years ago, “The fundamental rule in our national life – the rule which underlies all others – is that, on the whole, and in the long run, we shall go up or down together.” I believe America is on its way up. Thank you, God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America.

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NAACP Claims Voter Restrictions A ‘Direct Response’ To Increased Minority Participation By TPMMuckraker California Voters Wait To Cast Their Ballots On November 2, 2010

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The efforts of various state legislatures to make it more difficult for people to vote are a direct response to the high levels of political participation by African-American voters in the 2008 election and the growth of communities of color shown in the U.S. Census, the NAACP claimed in a report released on Monday. The “burgeoning political power” of minority voters, “has engendered a backlash,” according to the report. “In the face of far-reaching demographic and electoral trends revealing unprecedented minority political mobilization in America, an assault on voting rights accelerated in 2011,” the report states. “In this year alone, over a dozen states imposed obstacles to voting at each key stage of the democratic process.” “These restrictive voting measures will have a disproportionate impact on minority, low-income, disabled, elderly, and young voters, and threaten to substantially und ermine the political strength already harnessed by minority communities during the 2008 Presidential Election,” according to the report. Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez said in a speech last week that the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division’s review of voting changes in Texas, South Carolina and Florida (all jurisdictions covered by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act) “will be thorough, fair, and fact-based.” “These states bear the burden of showing that proposed changes are not intentionally discriminatory and will not have a retrogressive effect,” Perez said. “Where they meet this burden, we will preclear the changes; where they do not meet this burden, we will object.” 84

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Young, Black and Voting By: Peter Levine

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In 2008 young African Americans set an all-time voter-turnout record. Fifty-eight percent of black 18- to 29-year-olds voted -- the highest rate that any ethnic or racial group of young adults has ever achieved. Barack Obama deserved some credit, but young African Americans had posted relatively high turnout rates ever since the 1980s, often matching whites. That is an impressive record because wealth and education tend to boost voting for all demographic groups. If young African Americans achieve voting rates that equal or surpass those of young whites despite still having less wealth and less access to higher education (and despite deliberate efforts to suppress their votes), then being black is a positive predictor of political engagement. The same pattern also applies to other forms of engagement. In a national survey that my organization, CIRCLE (the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement), conducted in 2006 (before then-Sen. Barack Obama was running for president), we found that young African Americans were the most likely to belong to groups involved with politics; donate money to candidates and parties; display buttons or signs; and contact the media. Although young white people are somewhat more involved in nonpolitical volunteering than their black counterparts, the gap is not large. Young adults' civic engagement is an asset for the black community, creating political power and benefiting the individuals who participate. Working on causes with other people helps build skills, confidence, networks and a sense of satisfaction and purpose. But levels of participation are uneven. Some young African Americans engage much more than others, and levels of engagement sink in some years. In 2010, although young blacks voted at a higher rate than young whites, both groups turned out poorly: About three-quarters stayed home. Cathy Cohen, a distinguished political scientist at the University of Chicago and head of the Black Youth Project, predicted the low turnout well before Election Day and blamed the national Democratic Party for ignoring young adults. Even though President Obama will be on the ballot again in 2012, there is certainly no guarantee that black youth participation will be strong. Anyone who cares about youth civic engagement should dig beneath broad generalizations and stereotypes and recognize the diversity within all demographic groups, young African Americans certainly included. As a first step, we have conducted a "cluster analysis" of census data on civic engagement. This method identifies groups of people who have different civic-engagement profiles. Looking at the most recent data (from 2010), we find that young African Americans are divided into six clusters: * The Broadly Engaged (17.5 percent of black youths) filled many different leadership roles and did most of the civic and community work performed by young African Americans. * The Political Specialists (15.4 percent) were focused on voting and other forms of political activism. * The Donors (9.7 percent) gave money to political or social causes but did little else. 86

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Defending Democracy: Confronting Modern Barriers to Voting Rights in America By Teresa Haley

On December 5, 2011, the NAACP released a new report revealing direct connections between the trend of increasing, unprecedented African American and Latino voter turnout and an onslaught of restrictive measures across the country designed to stem electoral strength among communities of color. The report, Defending Democracy: Confronting Modern Barriers to Voting Rights in America, details a plethora of voter suppression initiatives, most of them pushed in states with large African-American populations and where voting turnout has surged. The joint report by the NAACP and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund examines scores of legislative proposals, ballot initiatives and voting laws enacted or proposed since the 2008 election. Copies of the report will be sent to the federal and state agencies that monitor, administer and enforce voting rights, including the US Department of Justice, the Federal Elections Commission, and the Election Assistance Commission, as well as Secretaries of State and Attorneys General in all 50 states. In addition, the report will be delivered to the appropriate committees of jurisdiction in the House and Senate, and entities within the United Nations. "It's been more than a century since we've seen such a tidal wave of assaults on the right to vote. Historically, when voting rights are attacked, it's done to facilitate attacks on other rights. It is no mistake that the groups who are behind this are simultaneously attacking very basic women's rights, environmental protections, labor rights, and educational access for working people and minorities," said NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous. "Voting rights attacks are the flip side of buying a democracy. First you buy all the leaders you can, and then you suppress as many votes as possible of the people who might object." Successful registration, education and get-out-the-vote campaigns in the last Presidential election cycle helped overturn electoral barriers and generated Black voter turnout at record high numbers across the country. Calling the response "historic in scope and intensity," the report highlights voting barriers that range from new and 87

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enhanced voter identification requirements to provisions that will curtail voter access to registration. Other proposals challenge mass registration drives, limit voting periods and tighten the ability of newly registered voters to cast ballots. The report maintains that the vote-blocking measures are not only a threat to individual voters, but are also an assault on Latino and African American communities that are enjoying demographic growth and the prospects of majority voting status in many districts. "This assault — which is comprehensive in its reach and was launched in time to affect the 2012 elections — threatens to undermine the record levels of political participation witnessed during the historic 2008 Presidential Election, by blocking access to people of color, the poor, the elderly and the young," the report warns. "These block the vote efforts are a carefully targeted response to the remarkable growth of the minority electorate, and threaten to disproportionally diminish the voting strength of African-Americans and Latinos," said John Payton, LDF President and Director-Counsel. The report is released less than a week before the Stand For Freedom rally for voting rights. Held in New York City on December 10 — the United Nations' International Human Rights Day — the rally will begin with a mass protest at 61st and Madison Ave. and continue to Dag Hammarskjold Plaza across from the U.N. The December 10 activities officially launch the NAACP's year-long public education and civic engagement project. To learn more about Stand For Freedom, please visit www.stand4freedom.org. 88

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(Photo by Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images)

Rights group: South African lesbians face abuse

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Above: Members of the Chosen Few lesbian football team warm up for a training session in Johannesburg. Photograph: Peter Andrews / Reuters/Reuters

JOHANNESBURG (AP) - South African lesbians are abused by even those closest to them, a reality that contrasts with the high ideals of the country's constitution, Human Rights Watch said Monday. "Lesbians and transgender men live in constant fear of harassment as well as physical and sexual violence," the watchdog group said in a report released Monday. The report, "We'll Show You You're a Woman," was based on interviews with 121 lesbians, bisexual women and transgender men in the impoverished black townships where the majority of South Africans live. Their lives contrast with those of urban, wealthy, often white gay South Africans who have turned parts of some cities into liberal havens. Gay pride parades are held annually in Johannesburg and Cape Town, which reaches out to gay tourists from around the world. Next year, an international pageant for gay men will be held in Johannesburg. Same-sex marriage is legal in South Africa and the country has among the most liberal laws on sexual orientation on the continent. But cultural attitudes don't always match the constitution approved in 1996 by lawmakers determined to show they were more progressive then their apartheid predecessors. One woman told Human Rights Watch of a series of rapes by her cousin, her coach and her pastor. Another said a female cousin spiked her drink so that the cousin's boyfriend could rape her. A third said that after a rape. "I really hated myself." 90

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Raping a lesbian, HRW researchers found, can make a man a township hero. Attackers boast publicly of their crimes and declare to their victims, "We'll show you you're a woman," the report said. Such attacks are known as "corrective rapes" in South Africa. Lesbians and others who don't fit the norm respond by avoiding being alone in public, trying not to attract men's attention, and hiding their sexual orientation, the report said. Human Rights Watch called on South Africa's government to act against the attackers. At a news conference in Johannesburg on Monday, Dipika Nath, the lead researcher on the report, acknowledged that addressing the crimes would have a limited effect. "What we really need is a sustained, large program" that embraces education in schools and engages with religious leaders, she said. Contempt for homosexuals has led to anti-gay legal measures elsewhere in Africa. Last week, Nigeria's Senate voted in favor of a bill that would criminalize gay marriage, gay advocacy groups and same-sex public displays of affection. Two years ago, Ugandan legislators introduced a bill that would impose the death penalty for some gays and lesbians, though it has yet to become law. 91

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Above; Laurent Gbagbo, the ex-president of Ivory Coast, faces becoming the first former head of state to stand trial before the international criminal court. Photograph: Reuters

Laurent Gbagbo appears before international criminal court

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His shirt was pressed white, his tie straight, his suit sharp and his demeanour calm yet defiant. It was quite a makeover from the sweaty white vest and bewildered expression that spoke of a man stripped of power and dignity when the eyes of the world were last upon him. Laurent Gbagbo, the former president of Ivory Coast, seemed intent on playing the global statesman rather than the fugitive from justice when he appeared at the international criminal court at The Hague on Monday. The ICC has previously tried and failed to bring the might of international law down on Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir, and Libya's late leader Muammar Gaddafi. The latter would have been unrivalled as legal theatre, but it was Gbagbo who faced the dishonour of becoming the first former head of state to stand trial at the world's premier war crimes court. Evidently unmoved by this piece of geopolitical history, the 66-year-old quibbled over how his name had been set down by the court and complained about the manner of his extradition. Gbagbo was transferred to the Netherlands last week to face four charges of crimes against humanity. His supporters are alleged to have committed murder and rape as he rejected Ivory Coast's election result and tried to cling to his decade-long rule. Prosecutors say about 3,000 people died in four months of violence perpetrated by both sides after Gbagbo refused to concede. President Alassane Ouattara took power in April, with the help of French and UN forces, after a dishevelled Gbagbo was plucked from his bunker. Looking healthier and more rested than on that occasion, Gbagbo smiled at supporters in the public gallery as the 25-minute hearing opened. "Good afternoon madame president, thank you for letting me speak," he said, "I am Laurent Gbagbo."

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He told three-judge panel he did not need them to read the charges. Speaking in French, Gbagbo said he wanted to see the evidence against him: "I will challenge that evidence and then you hand down your judgment." He blamed France, the former colonial power in Ivory Coast, for his arrest by pro-Ouattara forces: "I was arrested under French bombs. It was the French army that did the job." He said he saw his son beaten and his interior minister killed in the fighting. "I was the president of the republic and the residence of the president of the republic was shelled." He also complained about his transfer to The Hague last week from northern Ivory Coast where he was under house arrest. "We were deceived," he said, adding that the official in charge of his transfer "did not have the courage to tell me I was going to The Hague" until after he was at the airport. Monday's brief hearing was to confirm Gbagbo's identity and ensure he understood his rights and the charges. According to court papers, he is charged as an "indirect perpetrator" in a carefully orchestrated campaign of violence against Ouattara supporters. The presiding judge, Silvia Fernรกndez de Gurmendi, of Argentina, scheduled a hearing for 18 June when prosecutors will present a summary of evidence and judges will decide whether it is strong enough to merit bringing Gbagbo's case to trial. Before that, judges will schedule conferences to discuss progress in the case, during which Gbagbo can challenge his detention. and seek release pending further hearings. He said conditions at the detention centre where he has been held are "fine". Inmates have single cells of about 10 square metres where they can watch TV, read or work on their cases using computers but cannot access email or the internet. Each cell contains a bed, desk, bookshelves, a cupboard, toilet, hand basin and a telephone, although calls are placed by the centre's staff. Gbagbo's lawyers have condemned his arrest and transfer to the court.

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"It's a neocolonialist trial," his adviser Toussaint Alain told reporters in The Hague. "The [ICC] has become an instrument of France â&#x20AC;Ś to empower friends and punish the ones who don't follow along. "The presence of president Laurent Gbagbo in the dock is clearly a judicial error, a swindle, a move to liquidate him politically, socially and physically." Gbagbo's lawyer Habiba Toure also challenged the legitimacy of his detention last week on an ICC warrant while he was under house arrest. "In principle, an arrest warrant is delivered to a free individual or a person on the run, which was not the case for Mr Gbagbo because he was already in the hands of Ivory Coast officials," Toure said. A handful of supporters outside court condemned France's role in removing him from power. Abel Naki, who travelled from Paris to be at the court, told the Associated Press: "This is a masquerade by the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy. Sarkozy orchestrated this coup d'etat." But Charles Ble Goude, leader of the youth wing of Gbagbo's party, said the ICC was the ideal stage to undermine Ouattara's credibility. "The truth comes out now, with Laurent Gbagbo holding the floor Monday and for the coming months," he said in an open letter released on Sunday. The protesters' anger hinted at lingering tensions between Gbagbo and Ouattara supporters in Ivory Coast that the ICC will not necessarily heal. Human rights groups say grave abuses, including executions and rapes, were also were committed by forces loyal to Ouattara, who enlisted the help of a former rebel group to sweep south and force Gbagbo from office. The ICC's chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, said last week that both sides of the political divide in Ivory Coast committed crimes in the post-election chaos and that his investigation was continuing. Gbagbo is the sixth suspect taken into custody by the court, which has launched seven investigations, all of them in Africa. A further 12 suspects remain at large and the court has no police force to arrest them. http://www.guardian.co.uk 95

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Above: Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain and his wife Gloria Cain arrives to speak during the scheduled opening of a local campaign headquarters on December 3, 2011 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Herman Cain's presidential run: A setback black conservatives? By Robert Traynham

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Herman Cain's presidential run burned bright for awhile, but after the missteps and the scandals that led to him suspending his campaign today, will Cain's run be considered a setback for black conservatives? TheGrio contributor Robert Traynham reflects. When Herman Cain burst onto the national scene, I'll admit that I was the first to say that I was intrigued. Not because I was a former staffer for a Republican Senator who also served on President Bush's re-election team and by default a Republican loyalist. That would be too easy of an association. The intrigue went deeper than that. Here we had a handsome, articulate, successful business owner who just happened to be African-American and a Republican. Okay, I thought. This is different. Let's take this out for a test drive and see what kind of muscle this new showroom beauty has, I said to myself. Well we all know that the test ride we all experienced was a bumpy one, to say the least; with many wishing that Cain would have ended his campaign sooner than today -- in order to end the prolonged embarrassment, which is exactly what Cain's campaign has ended up to be. 97

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Cain's run was a national embarrassment for all concerned: the young staff that hitched their fortunes to a losing candidate with no sense of professionalism or direction; the donors who invested in his candidacy, hoping for some type of modest return (maybe a bumper sticker, lapel pin, or a candidate that was on message); and the volunteers and voters who believed in the vision that Cain tried to articulate. Cain often came up short, with rambling statements that often contradicted the material that his staff handed out. I've lost count of the many times his spokesperson had to backtrack on the candidate's statements because he found that Cain would say things that were contradictory. There's one other group of people who understandably feel let down by Cain's missteps: African-American Republicans. For all of the strides that were made by Colin Powell, JC Watts, and Condoleezza Rice over the last decade, Cain's candidacy has erased some of the glow. Despite the policy differences that many African-Americans have with them, figures like Powell, Watts and Rice came to the policy debate with their facts and intellect in check. In other words: you knew that they knew that serving in public life was an honorable profession and they respected the American people too much to waste their time by not coming to a discussion prepared. I can't say that about Herman Cain. When he came to the policy debate his facts were often wrong. He had a hard time grasping some of the most basic foreign policy points. 98

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He made a mockery of the dignity of running for president by suggesting that his Secret Service codename would be "cornbread" and that he if he was elected president he would not hire a Muslim for his administration. I can only imagine that when they heard Cain speak, Dr. Rice, Secretary Powell and Congressman Watts looked on in shocked horror. Regardless of whether or not you're an African-American Republican, can you blame them? The jarring responses to the allegations of martial infidelity and sexual harassment, the reports from his office that campaign staffers were not allowed to talk to him unless spoken to first, the puzzling responses to basic policy questions and the outright flip flopping on others left veteran political watchers, members of the media, and the allimportant general public left scratching their hands, wondering how and why watching this spectacle could possibly be a good use of their time. After watching Cain on the campaign trail for about five weeks, I thought I had him figured out. Here is a smart businessman who most likely has a lot of money who wants to play in the presidential field and kick around some ideas. There's nothing wrong with that; we saw the same in Ross Perot in 1992 and Donald Trump in 2000 and even with Michael Bloomberg floating the idea of a run in the past year. I thought Cain, like the others, was a vanity candidate running for office because he accomplished everything else in life and he wanted a capstone for his career. This has now been proven to be untrue. The unfortunate truth is that Cain appears to have simply wanted to sell books. He thought running for president would be the best way to make some money selling as many books as he possibly could. His intention was never to be a serious candidate and he probably never thought he would catapult to frontrunner status. In other words, all of this got way out of control and he could not control it. Or could he? The simple answer is that of course he could have controlled this. He could have controlled this by telling the complete truth, admitting that he had not done his homework when prepping to run for president, and he could have ended this by being forthright about his intentions. Black Republicans need not worry: there will be another serious candidate from their ranks sometime soon who will run for president, and when she or he emerges, all of America will be watching. When that happens, let's hope we can give that candidate serious consideration and that in return, they will not waste our time and insult our intelligence. Until then, let's all forget the man who said he was running for president, but really wanted to sell us some pizza. www.thegrio.com 99

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The Florida A&M University marching band performs on the field prior to Super Bowl XLIV between the Indianapolis Colts and the New Orleans Saints on February 7, 2010 at Sun Life Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida. (Photo by Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images)

Former FAMU drum major speaks out on black college hazing By Edwin Sylvain 100

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When I arrived on the campus of Florida A&M University as a bright eyed freshman 20 year ago, I had no idea what I was in store for. Being the first in my family to attend a four-year university, I had no one to warm me of the pitfalls that could fall before me. I had no warnings that late nights and early morning classes don't mix. Nobody told me that I couldn't have at least 3-4 girlfriends even if the ratio was 12 females to 1 male. Nobody told me that I'd go hungry some nights. All I knew is that I was at FAMU and I was going to be in the Marching 100. That was my goal and I was determined to reach it. I'm proud to say that I achieved my goal and I did it without being a victim of hazing. I know some may smirk as you do the math and say to yourself, "he went into the band in 1991 and they weren't hazing back then? That's old school. They beat everybody". I can't speak for everyone else in my freshman class. I can only speak for myself and a few others. And the main reason I can say that I didn't get hazed was because I didn't give anyone the opportunity to. There were attempts, but I declined the offer. There were threats, but I walked away from them. "You won't get respected". "You'll be called soft". "Homeboy...you know we all did it so you gotta do it too". Those are just some of the things I can remember hearing throughout that year. But I chose to ignore them all. Unfortunately, for many young people matriculating through college and deciding whether to join fraternities and sororities (or marching bands), they make the wrong decision. Deciding to join those organizations is not the wrong choice. Accepting hazing and everything that comes with it is the wrong choice. The people who decide to be hazed are just was wrong as the people who do the hazing. Hazing is a two-way street. Nobody wants to hear that and most won't accept it, but it's the truth. The recent death of FAMU drum major Robert Champion has once again brought back the conversation about hazing. His death and the events surrounding it, which are still under investigation, hit very close to home for me. We both marching in the FAMU band. We both served in the capacity of drum major. And since were are both part of a small fraternity of men, we met on a few occasions. We both were probably exposed to the subcultures that most college campuses possess, and which breed hazing. As he was laid to rest this week, the question was raised several times about what can be done to stop the hazing culture within our institutions of higher learning. More education? Stiffer penalties for those who haze (and allow themselves to be hazed)? Whatever the answer, the process to rectify must start now. It must begin so that in the future we don't lose any more Robert Champions.

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Where is the love in R&B music? By John Blake, CNN

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Left: Minni Riperton

When I was a teenager trying to figure out what the ladies liked, I would turn on the TV on Saturday afternoons to catch "The hippest trip in America." I'd close my bedroom door to make sure my younger brother wasn't watching, and then I'd imitate the latest dance moves on "Soul Train," the AfricanAmerican dance show. Standing in front of a mirror, I'd unleash a series of spasmodic dance moves before embarrassing myself too much to continue. Soul Train's dancers never had that problem. As the show's festive theme song played, wiry dancers in tight double-knit pants shimmied across the dance floor. I loved the huge afros, the lapels that were so wide you could land a small plane on them, and the suave "Soul Train" host, Don Cornelius, who signed off each show by declaring, "We wish you love, peace ... and sooooulllll!" But most of all I loved the music on "Soul Train," especially the slow jams. They had everything -- evocative lyrics, head-bopping grooves, soaring string arrangements and a whole lot of talk about love. Yet when I listen to R&B today, I ask myself the same question Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway posed in their classic 1972 duet: "Where is the Love?" Listening to black music today is depressing. Songs on today's urban radio playlists are drained of romance, tenderness and seduction. And it's not just about the rise of hardcore hip-hop or rappers who denigrate women. Black people gave the world Motown, Barry White and "Let's Get It On." But we don't make love songs anymore. Why? I asked some of the stars who created the popular R&B classics of the late 1960s, '70s and early '80s. Their answer: The music changed because blacks lost something essential -- something that all Americans, regardless of race, should regret.

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"We had so much harmony" Some of what we lost, they say, was an appreciation of love itself. Earth Wind & Fire keyboardist and founding member Larry Dunn says a new generation of black R&B artists is more cynical because more come from broken homes and broken communities. Left: Soul singer Al Green flourished in an era of classic R&B love songs, but love songs are fading from black radio.

"How are you going to write about love when you don't know what it is?" asks Dunn, whose new album "N2 The Journey" contains a remake of one of Earth Wind & Fire's most famous ballads, "Reasons." EWF, which gave us 1970s classics such as "After the Love is Gone," didn't create songs just to make hits, Dunn says. They also wanted to change lives. The group was known for songs like "Devotion" and "Shining Star" that celebrated love of self and God. Those sentiments may sound hokey now, but Dunn says EWF could tell their songs had the intended effect. People played EWF love songs at their proms and weddings, and people still write letters of thanks to the group today. "We had one guy who came up to us before a show and told us that we had helped him get off heroin," says Dunn, who is as relentlessly upbeat and warm as EWF's music. Kenny Gamble brought the same ambition to his sound. Gamble is the co-founder of Philadelphia International Records, known as the Motown of the '70s. The record label patented "Philly Soul" -- tight, sophisticated arrangements with lush strings that formed the backdrop for classic love songs such as Billy Paul's "Me and Mrs. Jones" and Teddy Pendergrass' "Come Go With Me." Yet Gamble's songs were also driven by black pride and self-help. With his co-producer and songwriter Leon Huff, Gamble created social conscience anthems like "Wake Up Everybody" by Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes and "Love Train" by The O'Jays. Both the love songs and those with messages sprang from the same source, the belief that loving one another and your community was important, says Gamble, who still lives in Philadelphia renovating blighted neighborhoods through his nonprofit, Universal Companies.

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"We had so much harmony, so much purpose in our music," he says. "Our whole purpose was the message is in the music, and that message was to love one another and to do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Love songs flowered during that era also because black people were more optimistic, music critic Rashod Ollison wrote in an essay on Barry White, the rotund singer with what Ollison described as the "low-as-the-ocean-floor bass voice" who gave us love songs such as "Never Gonna' Give You Up." White was caught up in the same social pathologies that trap some black youth today. He was a teenage father and gang member who spent time in jail, but "music saved him," Ollison wrote. When I listen to White's songs today, I'm struck by his constant references to love. White was in love with love. He even named his band "The Love Unlimited Orchestra." It seemed like an easier time to talk about love because things seemed to be getting better, Ollison wrote in his essay in The Virginian-Pilot newspaper. Left: Soul singer Teddy Pendergrass sang passionately ab asc jq 23jrrrrrm m m mm mmm2jj 3 2m m22222222222m,mfout sexual intimacy, but he still courted women in his songs.

"Black pop was ripe with music that echoed the aspirations of a people realizing some of the dreams of the civil rights movement," Ollison wrote. "Ghettos had become burnt-out shells after MLK was gunned down. Those who had the means to leave were now tucked in the 'burbs,' working in offices their mamas used to clean." At the time, I was just a kid growing up in a gritty part of West Baltimore, which would later serve as the setting for the HBO series "The Wire." But even then I could see evidence of that hopefulness. My older brother became the first family member to graduate from college. He took me with him when he bought his first suit, and later when he bought his first house. He gave me the first ride in his brand-new, pine-scented Pontiac Firebird. Everybody seemed to be following the path that George Jefferson, the strutting black character in the 1970s sitcom, took in the opening montage of "The Jeffersons." We were "movin' on up" and finally getting "a piece of the pie." 105

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Left: Heatwave

It was a time when, as a friend of mine said, "Being black was the bidness!" We celebrated our kinky hair and dark skin and greeted each other as "brother" and "sister" without any sense of irony. Everybody seemed to have a copy of Jet or Ebony magazine on their coffee tables; a man would have been slapped if he called a black woman a bitch. Then it all seemed to evaporate. Crack cocaine decimated black communities in the 1980s. The bluecollar jobs that gave many black families a foothold in the middle class began to disappear. Desegregation split the black community. Those with money and education moved to the suburbs. The ones left behind became more isolated. Today, we have a black first family, but our own families are collapsing. A 2009 study from the Institute for American Values and the National Center on African American Marriages and Parenting at Hampton University in Virginia highlights the erosion. The study found that while 70.3% of all black adults were married in 1970, that rate dropped to 39.6% by 2008. The study also showed that while 37.6% of black births were to unmarried parents in 1970, that figure soared to 71.6% by 2008. Our music became as grim as those statistics. Singing about love now seems outdated. Too narcissistic to love Something else also happened: Black people became more narcissistic, and so did our love songs. There's been a lot written about the narcissism of young Americans. They don't want to pay their dues. They are self-absorbed -- tweeting, texting, posting asides on Facebook -- and they are constantly immersed in their private worlds. This self-absorption has seeped into contemporary black love songs. One of R&B's most popular current hits is "Quickie" by Miguel, who declares, "I don't wanna be loved. I want a quickie." 106

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Left: Earth, Wind & Fire

There's nothing wrong with singing about sex. Few songs are as sexually charged as Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On." And few singers can evoke bedroom heat like Al Green. But black men don't even bother to romance women in love songs anymore, says Kimberly Hines, editor-in-chief of SoulBounce, an online progressive urban music site. Consider a recent Valentine's Day song by popular R&B artist Chris Brown called "No Bull S**t," in which he sings about inviting a woman over to his place at 3 in the morning because "you know I'm horny." Then he sings to her to take off her clothes because "you already know what time it is" and orders her to "reach up in that dresser where them condoms is." Compare Brown's lyrics to Pendergrass' "Come Go With Me," where he spends the song telling a woman, "You look so sweet ... You look like you oughta be with me ... We could sip a little wine, work things out." "It was more about romance and seduction," Hines says of classic R&B love songs. "It was more of, 'Let me work my way into something with you,' instead of 'Let's do it.' Teddy [Pendergrass] had to convince a woman to 'Come on over to my place.'" A recent study of Billboard hits confirms the notion that wooing a woman is disappearing from modern R&B. Psychology professor Gordon Gallup Jr. and student Dawn Hobbs studied the subject matter of the 174 songs that made the Billboard Top 10 in 2009. They analyzed three musical genres among the top-selling songs: R&B, country and pop. The researchers at the University at Albany in New York found that R&B contained the most references to sex per song (an average of 16 sex-related phrases per song). The top three sexual themes in R&B songs were the singer's sex appeal, the singer's wealth as it relates to finding a partner, and descriptions of sex acts. A total of 19 song themes were examined. The least-popular theme in R&B music was "courtship," while country music offered more songs about courtship than any other genre, the study said. 107

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Right: The O jays

Music critic Ollison says men and women have objectified each other in modern R&B and whine "about not getting what they felt they deserved." "It's a shame, because our desires don't change and we still want to be loved and open to someone, but the music we're sharing doesn't evoke it," Ollison says. "It's not about sharing. It's very narcissistic, sort of look at me." "You don't need a band anymore" That narcissism hasn't just seeped into the songwriting. It's infected the process of recording R&B love songs, as well. During the classic soul era of the '60s, '70s and '80s, making records was a communal experience. It was a time of great bands. Think of the album covers from that era -- they were crowded with musicians. The ability to play well -- and with others -- was expected. But how many contemporary R&B artists can actually sing, write or play instruments? Dunn, of Earth Wind & Fire, says he was playing professional engagements every day of the week by the time he was 15. There was only one prerequisite for being in a band. "You had to play your butt off," he says. "I got into music for one reason, and all the guys I knew did for the same reason. We wanted to be the best we could be. We didn't know you got paid. We were too young to be tripping on women. We didn't know what the bling-bling was." What made the classic R&B love songs great wasn't just the singing or the lyrics. It was the music. The wicked groove the drummer and bassist unleash on Barry White's "Never Gonna' Give You Up," Dunn's jazzy keyboard riffs on "Reasons," the bittersweet saxophone accompaniment on Billy Paul's "Me and Mrs. Jones" -- it all still sounds good. That musical depth is missing from contemporary R&B love songs. Funding for music programs has been cut from many schools, so kids often don't grow up learning how to play instruments. Any wannabe singer with a mediocre voice can now sit home in his or her underwear and eat Doritos while cutting a song on a computer and post it on the Internet the next day. "You don't need a band to make music anymore," says Hines of SoulBounce, which compiled a list of the top 100 classic R&B love songs. 108

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"A lot of producers just do everything by computer and knock that song out. Musicians have gotten checked out of the equation." Why songs about love matter So where do you go if you want to hear good contemporary R&B? Critics say to check out independent labels, neo-soul websites and Internet destinations like iTunes. There you'll find singers like Jesse Boykins III, a 26-year-old with a supple, soulful voice that would've fit right in during the classic soul era. Left: Jesse Boykins III's musical heroes, and fashion influences, come from the classic soul era.

Boykins and a collection of other artists are trying to start a "new romantic" movement in R&B to revive the genre. He says he still listens to artists like Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye for inspiration. "They taught me that it's OK to be vulnerable as an artist," he says. Boykins is still trying to get consistent radio play and uses the Internet and live performances to spread his music. His songs are also posted on iTunes and YouTube. "Love music is not gone, it's just harder to find," he says. Others say the same thing. Toby Walker, creator of the soul music site Soulwalking, says many contemporary R&B artists can produce great love songs by changing the way they make music. "These performers would hugely benefit by leaving the stilettos, makeup, mobile phones and management behind them, putting on a T-shirt and jeans, and retiring for a couple of months someplace with some real musicians, real instruments, and a recording studio," Walker says. Some people may say it's not important if we stop singing about love, but I'm not so sure. Black music isn't just for black folks; it's America's music. It's been that way for years. Black musicians who played the blues inspired rockers like Elvis Presley and the Rolling Stones; contemporary hip-hop artists have as many white fans as black listeners. What happens when millions of young listeners -- regardless of color -- learn about intimacy from songs that reduce love to reaching "up in that dresser where them condoms is"? And what happens to black people if we can't sing about love? 109

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Left: Luther Vandross Whenever I see a black couple doting on their children in public, I want to throw a ticker-tape parade. I know so few blacks who are married. How do we build families and raise children if we can't even stay together? Music was never just about entertainment in the black community. It was about hope. From the spirituals that slaves sang to survive brutal racism to civil rights anthems like "We Shall Overcome," love of God, self and one another was the message in much of our music. It was a message that made a difference during a critical part of my life. During my first year of college, I almost flunked out because I didn't believe anyone from my neighborhood could do well in school. I bought the notion that being smart was a "white thing." But I remember driving over to my older brother's house one weekend to listen to Earth Wind & Fire. Donning my headphones, I listened to the band encourage me to "Keep My Head to the Sky" and tell me that I needed "Devotion" to "open all life's treasures." I needed something more than songs, but they helped my self-confidence. I was proud to belong to a people who could create such exquisite, hopeful and exuberant music. Maybe, I thought, I could create something worthwhile myself one day. I took that attitude into the classroom and it changed my life. I graduated with honors. But I wonder where a new generation will go to hear those songs that talk about striving and love. I wonder if they will even know enough about their past to ask. Where is the love? www.cnn.com

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Ms. Haiti the Model is 25 yrs old, Haitian with Cuban, Jamaican and Italian blood flowing through her veins. Ms. Haiti is an aspiring model who started modeling in February 2010. “I hope to get even further in my career. I love fashion, music and dancing,“she says. At just 5’6” she was blessed with long legs and enjoys runway modeling. For serious booking inquiies only contact Book.Miss.Haiti@gmail.com

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Like A Boy

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Menswear has become a staple trend in woman’s fashion for some time now. More and more we are seeing ladies forgo their frilly skirts and high heeled shoes for the laid back and comfortable feel gained when wearing men-like clothing. Because we love the trend so much, we have put together a list of the top men’s inspired

pieces

are

currently

embracing this season. Take notes ladies. Boyfriend Watch: This trend continues to gain popularity. What better way to add arm candy to your wrist than with a large over-embellished men’s watch? Blinged out men’s watches come in every color and metal, and are simple yet polished additions to your wardrobe. Briefcase: The men’s inspired briefcase, or satchel handbag is a staple accessory this season. They are chic and beyond sophisticated, yet casual enough to be worn as an everyday handbag. Oxfords: Women’s oxfords are by far the most comfortable shoes ever. They are the perfect blend of preppy and cool. The best thing about oxfords is that they come in various colors and styles. Trust us, you can never get bored with them. Bow Ties and Tuxedo Blouses: Janelle Monae is the queen of this men’s wear trend. Effortlessly, she makes a masculine look seem feminine and might we add sexy. Tuck in a tuxedo blouse with a pair of black riding pants and oxfords. Viola, you’re channeling the lovely Janelle Monae! Suspenders: The thought of suspenders can bring horrific images of high watered pants and nerdy glasses. However, if worn correctly suspenders can be super cute. Pair them with fitted jeans and a plain white tee and trust us Steve Urkel will be the last thought that comes to your mind. www.cocoandcrene.com 118

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Should Black Men and Women Divorce? By Kirsten West Savali

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Divorce. Depending on whom you ask and the specific circumstances, it can either be an ugly situation that perpetuates fear and anxiety, or a beautiful, healing experience that ushers a man or woman into a healthier phase of adulthood. One fact that anecdotally seems to be the common thread in either circumstance? No one treks giddily to the justice of the peace, Turks and Caicos or their hallowed church with the idea floating around in their subconscious that their â&#x20AC;&#x153;foreverâ&#x20AC;? relationship will eventually end in strife, resentment, or resigned nonchalance. Over the years, I have witnessed marriages based on nothing more than sexual attraction disintegrate under the slightest duress like ancient papyrus; I have also witnessed some relationships splinter, yet, remain intact, based on unconditional love and support. One marriage that has evolved into a tragic caricature of its former glory is the collective marriage between Black men and women. Forged in the fires of shared historical pain, it is a relationship that we have allowed to smolder, crash and burn in a society designed for its failure. Which leads me to ask the question: Should Black men and women divorce? Let me be clear: I am not an advocate for a narrow description of marriage. I believe, with no hesitation nor reservation, that two consenting adults, regardless of ethnicity, religion, creed or gender, should have the basic civil right to legally enter into a binding contract with each other. Anything less than that is a flagrant violation of equality that should spark anger throughout every single subset of society â&#x20AC;&#x201D; not just the LGBTQ community. Just as miscegenation laws banning interracial couples from marrying were eradicated after the landmark case of Loving vs. The Commonwealth of Virginia, so to should any laws that perpetuate discrimination.

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But I’m not speaking about legalities today; nor am I examining the necessity–or lack thereof–in a single religious ceremony that neither defines nor preserves love. I’m referring to the marriage of ideals, culture and traditions that shape our diverse interactions with men and women who share our heritage. “Black men and women don’t need to officially “divorce” and probably never will,” says Dr. Boyce Watkins, founder of the Your Black World coalition. “What we do need to do, however, is rethink relationships and marriage in a way that is consistent with our circumstances and cultural context. White folks don’t need to tell us how to love one another and don’t have the right to judge the way we interact. At the same time, we must judge ourselves harshly for the fact that we’ve allowed ourselves to become so confused and hostile toward one another.” Dr. Joy Deguy, author of the provocative book, Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome – America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing, addresses the seismic historical oppression of African slaves and the current societal dregs that continue to poison men and women of African descent. After over a decade of research, she points to racist socialization (internalized racism), defined by Dr. Deguy as “learned helplessness, 121

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literacy deprivation, distorted self-concept, antipathy or aversion,” as an overwhelmingly crippling symptom of P.T.S.S. and the cause for hatred of the following:   

The members of ones own identified cultural/ethnic group, The mores and customs associated ones own identified cultural/ethnic heritage, The physical characteristics of ones own identified cultural/ethnic group.

Does that sound familiar? After meticulous research in a ground-breaking study, Dr. Ivory Toldson of Howard University and Dr. Bryant Marks of Morehouse College were able to report that eightyeight percent of all black men who are married are married to black women. Even though those numbers are reassuring to some, Dr. Toldson and Dr. Marks do not ignore the unhealthy nature of the marriage between Black men and women as a collective and illuminates the antagonistic tone that many brothers and sisters seem to adopt with each other: “…Black women and the media have accused black men, directly and indirectly, of betrayal, insolence and worthlessness. Meanwhile, black men have trivialized black women’s legitimate concerns, while idly and passively allowing researchers and pundits to manipulate numbers to insult their character and integrity,” the report states. This study is putting down in black and white what is evident in living color. The misogyny in entertainment, Hip-Hop specifically, still runs rampant, Black women, once unwilling to settle for being valued any less than priceless, are now content with being ‘dimes,” and disastrously, our young men and women are emulating this behavior and we have no one to blame but ourselves. In a vulnerable essay for Madame Noire, journalist Alexis Garrett- Stodghill makes the startling claim that it took a white man to make her feel beautiful as a black woman. What have we done to each other? Emmy-nominated, celebrity choreographer, Jeffrey Page, the mastermind behind Beyonce’s “Run The World (Girls)” video, believes that Black men and women continue to dwell in a stagnant state of love/hate because the familiar breeds comfort — even if the ensuing contempt is unhealthy:

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“Change is scary and the unknown is even more of a terror,” says Page. “Often it seems easier to settle into a situation, even if its undesirable and unhealthy – the frustration and stress that comes along with truth and/or correcting a flawed system is exhausting and can be overwhelming to the senses. The idea of being comfortable eases the mind, even if that same comfort is destructive. I strongly feel that divorcing an unpleasant and unhealthy situation is absolutely necessary regardless of how painful, hard or troubling. Greater and more profound damage occurs when contentment in a situation exist out of default and not urgency.” Sojourner Marable-Grimmett, Mom Blogger and community activist, holds on to the belief that the Black community still shows hints of its once unshakable unity and states that we should never give up on each other. “Although there are gloomy statistics hovering over our community and relationships like a dark cloud, we can still see glimpses of sun light and hope,” says Marable-Grimmett. “We can indeed divorce ourselves individually and collectively from the idea that these statistics will never change. Instead, individually and as a group we can “turn the tides” and lead by example. The importance of love, overcoming obstacles, and keeping the lines of communication open along the way are vital elements needed to break the cycle of emotional and psychological abuse that resides in the black community.” As a culture, it has become acceptable, even expected, for us to viciously attack each other, instead of unapologetically holding each other accountable for our actions, while saying simply: “I still love you.” We don’t encourage and elevate each other as we should — not in our homes, not in our music, not in our media. We must delve deeper within ourselves to heal the infected wounds we have allowed society–and our own failures and insecurities–to inflict upon us. The parameters of love are broader than merely sexual or romantic. Even when the road becomes arduous, we should never stop being invested in our mutual well-being, nor should we diminish the fact that our struggles are jagged reflections of each other; most importantly, we must immediately cease and desist positioning our future generations as sacrificial pawns of our historical baggage.

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We don’t have to be husbands and wives, but our shared history and culture demands that we stand in love as brothers and sisters. Dearroka Winfrey, CEO and Founder of Pretty Girls Rock Dresses, Inc. an organization dedicated to empowering women and girls to embrace their feminine power, believes that separation of our default expectations of each other may be the only way to encourage the healing process. “We need to divorce ourselves from the negative perceptions we have for one another by first understanding that one person’s actions is not an indicator of our whole race; secondly, we must understand what every other culture seems to know and embrace: there is POWER in family. Even if things don’t work out romantically, and sometimes they won’t, we are still family.” If we, Black men and women as a collective, cannot dwell in a healthy space as it pertains to the regard in which we hold each other, then maybe, just maybe, we need to move past this toxic discourse…and divorce. Or maybe, just maybe, we need to realize that we have always been, and will continue to be, in this struggle together — whether we like it or not; and mutual respect is the pivotal key to our survival as a community. www.clutchmagonline.com

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By Destinee Love

To order visit: www.destineelove.net

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There is no “Me” without you By Destinee Love

I yearn for your touch, The thought of your breath on my neck fills me with desire. Your eyes dive into my soul and make me feel human again. It cannot be you know desire without possibility is all we have. I know this yet the desire still stands. My heart is filled with thoughts unbridled. I dream of something more with you, A life that is completed by you. Yet you know it cannot be There is no way to quench this desire. All you will do is lose our mutual trust in mire. I yearn to hold your body and soul, To enter a world that is encompassed purely by you. To feel the enriching intoxication of all that is possible, The way you have already caught mine in a web of desire. This desire is an illusion of your own making. I have no control over your thoughts or actions. You make this all of yourself. Yet there is no “Being” without you. The way you smell enriches me. Your skin against mine. That touch you give me which no one else has dared to. The way you found that precious piece of my soul. 127

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Are we looking at the same thing? Do you really feel that way? Why do you say these things when you know it is untrue? Do you not care that I care for you too? Just not in that way. Yet there is “Life” without you. Pain is what is left now I have my realization. Heart- felt and sharp. Lost thoughts of what might have been, Spin around inside the husk that is my body. Don't feel that way, Just because it's not meant to be there is so much more out there for you and me. Stand tall my beautiful queen. Knowledge will come your way. There is always hope, So long as you stand to face the next day. Yet there is no “Existence” without you.

Much Love, and remember to “Keep It Sexi!!!” Available at Barnes & Noble, and Amazon Kindle. For order information: http://www.essenceofdestinee.com

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13 Keys to a Healthy Diet

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Developing healthy eating habits isn't as confusing or as restrictive as many people imagine. The first principle of a healthy diet is simply to eat a wide variety of foods. This is important because different foods make different nutritional contributions. Secondly, fruits, vegetables, grains, and legumes—foods high in complex carbohydrates, fiber, vitamins, and minerals, low in fat, and free of cholesterol—should make up the bulk of the calories you consume. The rest should come from low-fat dairy products, lean meat and poultry, and fish. You should also try to maintain a balance between calorie intake and calorie expenditure—that is, don't eat more food than your body can utilize. Otherwise, you will gain weight. The more active you are, therefore, the more you can eat and still maintain this balance. Following these three basic steps doesn't mean that you have to give up your favorite foods. As long as your overall diet is balanced and rich in nutrients and fiber, there is nothing wrong with an occasional cheeseburger. Just be sure to limit how frequently you eat such foods, and try to eat small portions of them. You can also view healthy eating as an opportunity to expand your range of choices by trying foods—especially vegetables, whole grains, or fruits—that you don't normally eat. A healthy diet doesn't have to mean eating foods that are bland or unappealing. The following basic guidelines are what you need to know to construct a healthy diet. 1 Eat plenty of high-fiber foods—that is, fruits, vegetables, beans, and whole grains. These are the "good" carbohydrates—nutritious, filling, and relatively low in calories. They should supply the 20 to 30 grams of dietary fiber you need each day, which slows the absorption of carbohydrates, so there’s less effect on insulin and blood sugar, and provides other health benefits as well. Such foods also provide important vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals (plant chemicals essential to good health). 2 Make sure to include green, orange, and yellow fruits and vegetables—such as broccoli, carrots, cantaloupe, and citrus fruits. The antioxidants and other nutrients in 131

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these foods may help protect against developing certain types of cancer and other diseases. Eat five or more servings a day. 3 Limit your intake of sugary foods, refinedgrain products such as white bread, and salty snack foods. Sugar, our No.1 additive, is added to a vast array of foods. Just one daily 12-ounce can of soda (160 calories) can add up to 16 pounds over the course of a year. Many sugary foods are also high in fat, so they’re calorie-dense. 4 Cut down on animal fat. It’s rich in saturated fat, which boosts blood cholesterol levels and has other adverse health effects. Choose lean meats, skinless poultry, and nonfat or low-fat or nonfat dairy products. 5 Cut way down on trans fats, supplied by hydrogenated vegetable oils used in most processed foods in the supermarket and in many fast foods. 6 Eat more fish and nuts, which contain healthy unsaturated fats. Substitute olive or canola oil for butter or stick margarine. 7 Keep portions moderate, especially of high-calorie foods. In recent years serving sizes have ballooned, particularly in restaurants. Choose a starter instead of an entrée, split a dish with a friend, and don’t order supersized anything. 8 Keep your cholesterol intake below 300 milligrams per day. Cholesterol is found only in animal products, such as meats, poultry, dairy products, and egg yolks. 9 Eat a variety of foods. Don't try to fill your nutrient requirements by eating the same foods day in, day out. It is possible that not every essential nutrient has been identified, and so eating a wide assortment of foods helps to ensure that you will get all the necessary nutrients. In addition, this will limit your exposure to any pesticides or toxic substances that may be present in one particular food. 10 Maintain an adequate calcium intake. Calcium is essential for strong bones and teeth. Get your calcium from low-fat sources, such as skim milk and low-fat yogurt. If you can't get the optimal amount from foods, take supplements. 11 Try to get your vitamins and minerals from foods, not from supplements. Supplements cannot substitute for a healthy diet, which supplies nutrients and other 132

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compounds besides vitamins and minerals. Foods also provide the "synergy" that many nutrients require to be efficiently used in the body. 12 Maintain a desirable weight. Balance energy (calorie) intake with energy output. Exercise and other physical activity are essential. 13 If you drink alcohol, do so in moderation. That is one drink a day for women, two a day for men. A drink is defined as 12 ounces of beer, 4 ounces of wine, or 1.5 ounces of 80-proof spirits. Excess alcohol consumption leads to a variety of health problems. And alcoholic beverages can add many calories to your diet without supplying nutrients. www.blackwebmd.com

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Magazine

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Ways to save on last-minute holiday travel By Jessica Dickler

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The cost of the average domestic flights between Dec. 16 and Jan. 1 is already 5% higher than last year, while international airfares are up 6%, according to Travelocity. Over New Year's Eve weekend, domestic airfares are up 6% and international airfares have jumped 12% from 2010. But that doesn't mean you still can't score a deal before the end of the year. Finding one at this point just requires a little flexibility and some swift action. With increased demand for flights over the holidays, there is less chance of a last-minute sale, so travelers should secure tickets now before prices rise even higher, said Jasmine Kim, Travel-Ticker.com's General Manager. A few airlines such as United (UAL, Fortune 500), American (AMR, Fortune 500) and US Airways (LCC, Fortune 500) may launch last-minute deals, but the routes will be limited, added Warren Chang, vice president and general manager of Fly.com. In addition, those advertised sale fares usually require up to a two-week advance purchase, which could leave many holiday travelers stranded. "Most airlines have fares on sale for travel in January and February, with the December holidays already blacked out," he said. Chang advises travelers to consider shorter flights to find the best deals this holiday season. On those legs, there are fewer blackout days and fares are significantly lower, he said. For example, flights between Boston and New York can still be snagged for $40 each way on American Airlines, Delta (DAL, Fortune 500) and JetBlue (JBLU). Departing from Chicago to New York is as little as $51 each way Spirit (SPR) and flights from Phoenix start at $49 each way US Airways. Another key to saving, Chang said, is to be flexible with your travel dates and to be willing to travel on the actual holiday to get the best prices. This year, Friday, Dec. 23 is one of the most popular times to fly, so look for flights on Wednesday, Dec. 21, or even Christmas Day instead. In fact, travelers departing on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day will spend $17 to $144 less than the average airfare, according to Travelocity. For even cheaper tickets, consider using nearby airports outside of the city center, such as San Jose or Oakland instead of San Francisco, or Fort Lauderdale instead of Miami, Chang added. And be sure to sidestep those pesky baggage fees that can ruin any good deal. That means that travelers bearing gifts should take advantage of all those free shipping offers and send presents directly to their destination instead. For the lowest fares, Orbitz senior editor Jeanenne Tornatore recommends opting for one connection or more. "If budget is your main concern you should definitely look at the one-stop flights," she said. But if you are concerned that bad weather will spoil your trip, don't chance it, noted Kim. Remember the blizzard that socked the Northeast just after last Christmas? So do most people who were traveling that week.

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business

Entertainment Manager Yandy Smith Explains the Business of â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Love & HipHopâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; By Janell Hazelwood 137

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We’ve seen the scandal, the tears, and the fights on VH1′s Love & Hip Hop, which follows the lives of women involved either in the music industry or with men who make a living from it. Now, as the show begins its second season, we’ll see new additions, with one being a young boss who brings a different aspect of the business to the table. Yandy Smith, 29, joins the cast as a young entertainment powerhouse, having worked with industry superstars Missy Elliott and Busta Rhymes, and serving as manager to hip-hop artist Jim Jones and model Toccara. Smith got her big break as executive assistant to Mona ScottYoung—co-founder of Violator Management and founder of Scott-Young Monami Entertainment—and went on to work her way up the ranks to broker deals for clients of her own. BlackEnterprise.com talked with the Howard University alum about how reality TV benefits her brand, how she gained success, and how up-and-comers can get their big break. BlackEnterprise.com: What inspired you to get into the entertainment business, and how did you land your gig with Mona Scott-Young? Smith: Actually I came in as an intern to her assistant’s assistant. I’d just graduated from Howard, and I wanted to get into entertainment law. I wanted to see what the whole entertainment world was about and decided to seek out an internship. I came across Violator Management. At the time they weren’t looking to hire anyone. I decided I’d come back again, and I’d check back the next week and the following week, until they finally said, “Let’s just give her something to do.” I became an intern after that. Then from being intern, I became an assistant to Mona’s assistant, and then became Mona’s executive assistant, and now Mona and I are partners. How did you become involved with Love & Hip Hop? I actually pitched the show to [the show's now executive producer] Jim Ackerman, but it was a story based on Jim Jones’ life. [Ackerman] thought it was great, so the pilot got picked up, and we started shooting. Shortly after, a lot of things began happening in Jim’s personal life that affected shooting the show. I needed to rework [the concept], and I didn’t want to lose the deal at VH1. So I called Mona to come in and help me rework the idea. She had a great idea she was pitching to another network about the women behind the scenes in hip hop… We [thought of] how to incorporate that with [Jim's story] and the vision came to life. I loved the show last year. The only thing I would’ve loved to add was to show a woman who stood on her own two feet and didn’t do it on the back of the men in the industry. So after thinking, Who would be that woman? Mona said, “Hey, how about you?”

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Above:: Cast of VH1's Love and Hip Hop (Image: VH1)

The blogs have been abuzz about your conflict with Jim Jones’ girlfriend and fellow castmate Chrissy, which reportedly led to your professional split from Jones as his manager. What were the challenges you had, and how best do you think one should handle professional conflicts? I can’t get into many details about the show, but my best advice is to draw a line, if you can, between business and personal. Sometimes your clients might get you involved in their personal space because you’re not only their manager, sometimes you’re also a psychiatrist, a friend, an adviser. And that sometimes can lead to lines getting crossed. I would say, as much as you can stay out of that, stay out of it. [The management situation] plays out on the show… I love Jim to death, and not only has he been my client, he’s been my brother, he’s been my best friend for almost eight years now. We’ll always work together in some capacity, whether I’m managing him or not. Many young people romanticize the glamor and glitz—parties and perks—of being in the music industry. What are the realities of some of the other aspects people don’t see? It’s absolutely a glamorous lifestyle—if that’s what you want—but to get to that, it takes a lot of hard work. It’s two-fold for me: a plus and a negative. I’ve given up so much time and energy. I haven’t had time to start a family or have a consistent relationship that flourished because I’m 139

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always on the road, always traveling… It’s hard, and it’s a 24-hour, 7-day-a-week job. There’s no vacation. My phones are attached to my hip even when I’m trying to vacation. You do balance it out with a lot of the perks, like going to the great parties or traveling all over the world, but there comes a point in time when it’s, what’s more important— family or career—and that’s where I am now. You’ve extended your brand into an online boutique and lifestyle blog, Everything Girls Love. Why did you start this venture? When I decided to do the show, I knew how much the show aired and looked at it as a great branding opportunity. It’s like a commercial for whatever it is you have going on. I thought, What is something that I’d like to promote? I’m a businesswoman, first and foremost, and when I looked around my room and saw all these rings, necklaces and pendants, I said, “I got it. I’m going to get into the accessories business.” What does the collection offer? Right now, the collection consists of about 30 pieces, including earrings, rings, bracelets and pendants. What sets us apart from everyone else is that every one of our pieces are bold, strong while still feminine and beautiful. Also, not only are we an accessories line, we’re also starting a loungewear line featuring rhinestone and sequin accents that are very edgy, but cute. Our ultimate goal is to be the one-stop-shop for ladies before you go out, go on a date, or just hang out and do your girly things you like to do—all the little feminine things that you love. And we’ll also have a blog section discussing trends, beauty tips and [there'll be a] Rock Candy section, featuring handsome men you should be looking out for. Where do you ultimately see yourself in 10 years? A year ago I would’ve answered this question completely different and eight years ago, when I was graduating college, I would’ve answered it completely different. I never, in a million years, would’ve thought I’d be in front of a camera, so the sky’s the limit. I’m just open and willing to do whatever it takes to further my brand and my career, while empowering women and showing them we can do everything on our own if we need to. www.blackenterprise.com

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Tiger Woods wins first golf tournament in two years By Shane Bacon

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When Tiger Woods used to be Tiger Woods, The Man Everyone Feared, he had an incredible ability that not many professional golfers possess. He could fix his golf swing during a round. Sure, there were times when it just wasn't clicking or the shots weren't going as he wanted, but at times he'd be struggling until the last few holes and then just dial it in, find the right stuff and make it happen. It was truly an art form. No, we're not here to talk about the Tiger of old. On Sunday at the Chevron World Classic at Sherwood Country Club in southern California, Woods struggled like he had over the last 749 days â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the time between trophies. A two-shot lead was turned into a one-shot deficit with two holes to go, and it looked like another tournament would slip away from the once-great Woods. But a funny thing happened. Tiger found it again. At first, with a 9-iron on the par-3 17th, where Tiger kept the ball below the hole, rolled in a must-make birdie and fist pumped like it was 2001. The second instance came on the final hole, when Tiger pulled a move from Harding Park when he walked after his second shot, watched as a gritty Zach Johnson couldn't find the bottom of the cup with his birdie bid, and then finally, thankfully, dropped in a putt to win his first event in two years. We could fill up DVD after DVD of celebrations by Tiger Woods. He has run after putts, thrown down his cap, high-fived multiple caddies and even shed tears. But no fist pump in his career looked as genuine as the one when that putt dropped on the 72nd hole at 142

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Sherwood. Tiger finally had an opportunity to do something, and did it, not on someone else's terms but on his own. He won that golf tournament, and his reaction was made to remind you of that. A lot of people will talk about the time between wins and what was different then as opposed to now, but the story isn't really that. It's just that a guy played good enough golf to beat some of the best players in the world, and when the opportunity presented itself for Tiger on Sunday, he took it. The golf world needed it, Tiger needed it, and to be honest, his competitors needed it. An NBC camera intelligently caught a glimpse of Johnson watching as Tiger's birdie putt dropped on 18 and the look he had said it all. "Yup," Johnson appeared to nod, "he's back." I think we can all agree about that.

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The Thrilla in Manila was the third and final famous boxing match between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier for the Heavyweight Boxing Championship of the World, fought at the Araneta Coliseum in Quezon City, Metro Manila, Philippines on October 1, 1975. The bout is often ranked as one of the greatest fights of 20th century boxing, and is the climax to the bitter rivalry between Ali and Frazier over who was the legitimate Heavyweight Champion. That situation came about after Ali was stripped of the title over his refusal to join the armed forces when drafted during the Vietnam War. Some years later, Frazier petitioned President Nixon to restore Ali's right to box, thereby bringing about the so called Fight of the Century between two undisputed heavyweight champions in 1971. During the whole period from before their first fight to their last face-off in Manila, Ali had used his wit, sharp tongue, and position with the press to take characteristic verbal pot shots at Frazier (as was his practice with all opponentsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and which made good copy and controversy) but these became particularly intense, controversial and at times ugly and this verbal battery heated the rivalry into new territory. 145

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