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Lifers
Inc.
&
Men United For A Better Philadelphia Cosponsor
Historic Conference
By Junious R. Stanton
On Thursday April 15, 2003 the State Correctional
Institution at Gratersford, Pennsylvania, Lifer's Inc., a group
of men serving life sentences for a variety of crimes, prison
administration and Men United For a Better Philadelphia, a
grassroots organization formed to address and resolve the issues
around community violence, held an historic day long anti-crime
summit at Gratersford prison.
Inmates, administration, representatives from the
Philadelphia Police Department, various social agencies, victims
advocacy groups, and concerned citizens met to discuss and
formulate ways the Lifers, ex-offenders, and the community can
work together to stem the tide of anti-social, self and
community destructive behavior. The members of Lifers Inc. have
nothing to gain personally from establishing a prison-community
rehabilitation partnership or participating in the programs that
will come out of this summit. They are in prison for life. Many
have no chance of parole of sentence commutation, yet they do
this out of genuine concern for their families and
communities.
Bilal Qayyum, Malik A. Aziz and Wali Smith of Men United For
A Better Philadelphia worked with prison Superintendent Donald
T. Vaughn and Deputy Superintendent Manuel A. Arroyo and the men
of Lifers Inc. for almost a year planning this historic
conference. This is the first conference of its kind held in the
Pennsylvania Prison system and the nation. The summit was
postponed once and recent events seemed to conspire to force
another postponement or cancellation, but the administration
stepped in and gave their approval and blessing.
The theme of the conference was "Crime Prevention
Summit: Building Partnerships." Police Commissioner
Sylvester Johnson was the morning keynote speaker. He brought
with him several upper level police department personnel who
remained and participated in the all day conference. The
objective of the conference was to establish effective
partnerships uniting to reduce the recidivism rate amongst
returning ex-offenders, train an ongoing cadre of ex-offender as
street workers who work with Men United For A Better
Philadelphia doing grass roots, street level intervention with
the young men in the community to channel and redirect their
energies into pro-social activities and dissuade them from
engaging in criminal activities. The Lifers will train the
inmates returning to the community in what they call the
"Malcolm X paradigm" of personal transformation and
community involvement.
Bilal A. Qayyum one of the planners shared the process.
"We've been working on this for about eight to ten months.
Our goal it to build a collaboration between the Lifers, Men
United, work with the brothers that are in prison that will be
coming out. The bridge will be the Lifers who will work with the
men before they come out and then we'll work with them once they
come out. If a man knows he'll be getting out in say six months,
the Lifers will start working with them along with the
administration. We'll know when they'll be coming out and we can
work with them when they get out."
He explained the involvement of the various groups and
agencies. "PAAN, the police, elected officials,
ex-offenders, the Masons, Local 332, some fraternities, Town
Watch have been a part of us since day one. The purpose of Men
United is very focused and simple. We're a coalition group to
reduce violence in the city of Philadelphia."
Ray Jones a M.U.F.B.P. community worker explained how the
process will work. "We're going to integrate the young men
who are suggested by the Lifers who are preparing to get out, to
work with us. We expect that to happen within the next thirty to
sixty days. They'll give us a list of those about to come out or
those who are in half-way houses now and we're going to put them
on the street corners with us, and in school based projects
talking to all male classes. Third, they're going to be part of
our ongoing think tank, if you will, in terms of how do we tweak
some of the projects we're doing and how do we better enhance
what they're doing here in the prison. This is an ongoing long
term project."
After the morning session, in the chapel, lunch was served in
an adjoining cafeteria. Following lunch, workshops were
conducted in the education building. Workshop topics included
Community Safety, Substance Abuse Prevention and Education,
Economic Empowerment, Recovering Victims-Community and
Ex-offenders, Youth Crime and Violence and Community
Reintegration. After the workshops the attendees reconvened to
present summaries of what took place in the various workshops.
The conference ended on an exhilarating note of co-operation,
positivity and expectancy. M.U.F.B.P., Lifers Inc. and the
administration committed to doing the conference on an ongoing
basis.
Superintendent Donald T. Vaughn shared his enthusiasm for
working with Lifers Inc. "Most people would ask what do
lifers have to do with anti-crime? Well they recognize there is
a need and they want to give something back, they have something
to offer. They can help the organizations recognize because they
came from the same backgrounds of the problems that they are
having with the drug addiction, the street gangs because all of
them have some type of involvement that brought them in this
direction. So it's been a positive endeavor for them. They have
made a major turnaround since they have been incarcerated. I
don't have problems with Lifers, once they arrive and they
recognize the reason they have been incarcerated, the time that
they've received, they take on a positive approach to try to
give back something that they know they have taken away."
In addition to working with soon-to-be released inmates,
M.U.F.B.P. and Lifers Inc. also have created several other
outreach programs: Project Life-Line a program similar to Sacred
Straight designed to work with at risk males fifteen years old
and PLAY Prisoners Letters And Youth and literacy and poetry
development program for at-risk males.
For more information about Men United For A Better
Philadelphia and their Lifers Inc. partnership call Bilal Qayyum
at (215) 683-2092.
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Blacks in Hispanic Literature: Critical Essays
Edited by
Miriam DeCosta-Willis
Blacks in Hispanic Literature is a
collection of fourteen essays by scholars and
creative writers from Africa and the Americas.
Called one of two significant critical works on
Afro-Hispanic literature to appear in the late
1970s, it includes the pioneering studies of
Carter G. Woodson and
Valaurez B. Spratlin, published in the 1930s, as
well as the essays of scholars whose interpretations
were shaped by the Black aesthetic. The early
essays, primarily of the Black-as-subject in Spanish
medieval and Golden Age literature, provide an
historical context for understanding 20th-century
creative works by African-descended, Hispanophone
writers, such as Cuban
Nicolás Guillén and Ecuadorean poet, novelist,
and scholar
Adalberto Ortiz, whose essay analyzes the
significance of Negritude in Latin America. This
collaborative text set the tone for later
conferences in which writers and scholars worked
together to promote, disseminate, and critique the
literature of Spanish-speaking people of African
descent. . . .
Cited by a
literary critic in 2004 as "the seminal study in the
field of Afro-Hispanic Literature . . . on which
most scholars in the field 'cut their teeth'."
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Greenback Planet: How the Dollar Conquered
the World and Threatened Civilization as We Know It
By H. W. Brands
In Greenback Planet, acclaimed historian H. W. Brands charts the dollar's astonishing rise to become the world's principal currency. Telling the story with the verve of a novelist, he recounts key episodes in U.S. monetary history, from the Civil War debate over fiat money (greenbacks) to the recent worldwide financial crisis. Brands explores the dollar's changing relations to gold and silver and to other currencies and cogently explains how America's economic might made the dollar the fundamental standard of value in world finance. He vividly describes the 1869 Black Friday attempt to corner the gold market, banker J. P. Morgan's bailout of the U.S. treasury, the creation of the Federal Reserve, and President Franklin Roosevelt's handling of the bank panic of 1933. Brands shows how lessons learned (and not learned) in the Great Depression have influenced subsequent U.S. monetary policy, and how the dollar's dominance helped transform economies in countries ranging from Germany and Japan after World War II to Russia and China today. He concludes with a sobering dissection of the 2008 world financial debacle, which exposed the power--and the enormous risks--of the dollar's worldwide reign. The Economy |
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* * * * *
The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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If you like this page consider making a donation
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Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
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Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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update
14 December 2011
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