thenewjournalandguide.com

By Maya Rhodan
NNPA Washington Correspondent

WASHINGTON (NNPA)
    For Malcolm Shabazz, grandson of Malcolm X, trouble seemed to come easy.
His troubles began in 1997, when at age 12 he plead guilty to setting fire to the apartment of his grandmother, Betty Shabazz, that resulted in her death in New York. As a result, young Malcolm spent four years in juvenile detention centers.

By George E. Curry
NNPA Columnist
 
    When some of us saw the first video of Charles Ramsey, the colorful Black dishwasher in Cleveland who is being celebrated as a hero for rescuing three White women captives from horrid conditions in a Cleveland house, we had a flashback to Antoine Dodson, who became a flamboyant Internet sensation after saving his sister from a would-be rapist in their Huntsville, Ala. housing apartment, and Sweet Brown, who barely escaped a fire in her Oklahoma City complex.

By Rosaland Tyler
Associate Editor
New Journal and Guide

    A commissioned report shows the threat of violence connects many young black girls with the four black girls in Birmingham who recently received a Congressional Medal for dying during a church bombing in Birmingham nearly 50 years ago.
    Although young black girls often receive less attention these days than young black males, both live in ferocious environments. For example, this past March, an 8-year-old black girl was handcuffed and held by police for two hours after throwing temper tantrums at Love Joy Elementary in Alton, Ill.

By Marc Morial
NNPA Columnist
 
    “Sometimes I close my eyes and all I can remember is that awful day … But other times, I feel Ben’s presence filling me with courage for what I have to do …”Francine Wheeler, mother of 6-year-old Ben Wheeler, one of the 26 victims of the December 14 Sandy Hook tragedy.

By Marian Wright Edelman
NNPA Columnist
 
    The United States Senate’s failure to pass common sense gun safety measures – the Manchin-Toomey Amendment to expand background checks to keep guns away from underage or dangerous people, and amendments to ban assault weapons and high capacity magazines designed only to kill as many human beings as possible – is a moral failure of great magnitude. Once again, the safety of children has been sacrificed by political leaders in service to the gun lobby.

By Bill Fletcher, Jr.
NNPA Columnist
 
    March is the official month to “discuss” women and it could not arrive too soon.  What is sad about both Black History Month (February) and International Women’s Month (March) is that too many of us think that those are the only legitimate times of the year to discuss the issues affecting these respective groups.  In either case, attention to the plight of women, in March or any other month, is warranted.   

By Cynthia E. Griffin
Special to the NNPA from Our Weekly

    Feb. 26 will mark one year since then-17-year-old Travyon Martin was gunned down by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch coordinator in a gated community of Sanford, Fla.
    Martin was visiting family in the area and was walking back from the store when, despite requests by local police not to do so, Zimmerman began following Martin because he appeared “suspicious.”

By George E. Curry
NNPA Columnist
 
    Over a 43-year career in journalism, I have been blessed with some memorable experiences: I have covered presidential and vice presidential campaigns, I have flown on Air Force One, I have gone to parties at the White House, met Pope John Paul II, spent two weeks in Egypt, visited former slave dungeons in Dakar and Accra and have traveled around the world, including  Rome, Paris, London, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Havana, Vienna and recently Beijing and Shanghai.

By Maya Rhodan

NNPA Washington Correspondent

WASHINGTON

     Many of the students at Harvard School of Excellence in the Inglewood neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side are the same age as the 20 first- and second graders who were gunned down at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

     Aisha McCarthy, the principal of Harvard School, was surprised by how her students reacted to the shooting spree 844 miles away in Newtown, Conn.

“There was no reaction,” McCarthy, principal at Harvard School of Excellence, says. “My own kids were scared and we talked about it, but there was a different reaction when I went to school the next day.”

By Dr. Ron Daniels
 
    Last week, once again President Barack Hussein Obama mounted the podium at the Capitol to deliver the State of the Union Address to a Joint Session of Congress, the nation and the world. By all reasonable measures the address was an impressive center-left, moderate-liberal agenda on domestic issues like jobs, the minimum wage, infrastructure repair, energy, early childhood education, tax reform, deficit reduction, gender equity, marriage equality, immigration and gun security - a policy prescriptions vastly superior to the dangerous/extremist positions of the radical conservatives and Tea Party obstructionists.