Entries Tagged 'News' ↓

He’s at least partly responsible for the mess we’ve been in for the past 8 years.

Around 3:00 a.m. on February 17, 2005, New York City transit workers found two suspicious bags alongside the track at the Nostrand Avenue station in Brooklyn. They contained body parts of 19 year old Rashawn Brazell.

The first 72 hours of a murder investigation are the most important, police will tell you, because evidence is fresh, memories still vivid and odds are favorable that clues will result in someone’s arrest. Beyond that, the chances diminish precipitously.

It is now three years later and one of the most gruesome crimes New York City history remains unsolved. The trail is growing cold.

Someone, somewhere, knows something. Keep Rashawn’s memory alive and the hope for closure a possibility.

The case
Memorials
Rashawn Brazell Memorial Fund

While I was away, and although I was out there, I missed this year’s Screen Actors Guild Awards. Par for the course, my voting was not exactly in line with the results. I picked seven correctly and eight wrong. That’s actually better than past years however.

I came across this article on the fabulous Ruby Dee. She earned a SAG Award and may also walk away with an Oscar. If the Academy voters are really voting for her entire body of work in show business instead of this particular role, is that really such a bad thing?

I also saw this article about the emotional changes we all apparently go through during midlife. And I thought it was just me.

While network television is mired in rerun and reality show hell as film and television producers unwisely choose not to negotiate and settle their differences with striking members of the Writers Guild, there is worthwhile viewing to be found on some public television stations.

The Freedom Files is a nine-part series returning for its second season this fall with a slate of new programs examining the legal inequities around the death penalty, same-sex marriage, gay parenting, voting rights, immigrants’ rights, surveillance, sex education, the school-to-prison pipeline, and unlawful imprisonment and torture.

These half-hour documentaries feature the firsthand accounts of real people who have taken on the powers that be, often at great risk to themselves, in order to preserve their precious constitutional rights. They draw on the power of true stories to highlight vital civil liberties issues of our time and inspire viewers to take action.

This excerpt from an episode called, “Freedom to Marry” follows the lives of three Maryland couples seeking to overturn state law that bars same-sex couples from marriage. Takia Foskey and Jo Rabb had a commitment ceremony four years ago but despite being in a committed relationship, they lack the hundreds of legal protections afforded to heterosexual married couples, and must worry about how to protect their family without these protections. 

Filmmaker and political activist Robert Greenwald, whose ground-breaking films include Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers and Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism, continues as executive producer of the series.

The episodes will be distributed nationwide to public television stations, and sneak previews will air in the fall on Peabody award-winning Link TV. The programs also will be made available on Web sites such as YouTube.com.

Meanwhile, Newark, NJ-based public radio station 88.3 WBGO-FM will shed light on an overlooked and neglected segment of that city’s population, its LGBT community. Thursday night at 8 pm ET, on Newark Today first-term Newark Mayor Cory Booker will answer questions and field listener calls and emails on some of the harsh conditions facing the city’s gays and lesbians. Those conditions recently came to light in a New York Times article that contrasted the progressive social legislation happening across the rest of New Jersey with the often blatant homophobia that exists in its largest city.

Listeners outside the area can tune in via the internet at www.wbgo.org.

Jerry Falwell 1933-2007

A petty right-wing demagogue who misinterpreted the Bible to serve his own narrow political viewpoint, is dead.

As my mother always said, if you have nothing nice to say about someone, say nothing at all.