Death of a States Woman, Activist, Who Walks On
Editorial of the Washington Post April 21, 2010

“UPON HER DEATH Tuesday, Dorothy I. Height was hailed a hero, the grand dame of the civil rights movement, an icon. She was all of those things. Yet somehow words fail to capture what was so remarkable about this woman who fought for so long, and with such tenacity, dignity and resolve, for racial justice and gender equality. Because she lived such a full life, an entire generation grew up knowing her without fully understanding the entrenched unfairness she fought against and helped to lessen. To appreciate Dorothy Height is to understand the slights she endured and the obstacles she encountered both as an African American and as a woman, and how they only spurred her life-long campaign for justice.
Ms. Height died at the age of 98 on Tuesday morning at Howard University Hospital. President Obama eulogized her as "the godmother of the Civil Rights Movement and a hero to so many Americans." Her activism dates to the 1930s, and she played an influential, if largely unsung role, in the civil rights movement that transformed America in the 1950s and 1960s. Even though she presided over the National Council of Negro Women, a group she would head for 40 years until 1997, Ms. Height and her work often went unnoticed and unrecognized. She was seated on the platform with Martin Luther King Jr. when he delivered his "I have a dream speech" at the Lincoln Memorial, but she would later express dismay that no one gave voice to women's rights.
Such experiences enabled her to see the injustices against women and African Americans as part of the same set of American problems that needed to be addressed jointly, and not as separate -- or even conflicting -- concerns. And, just as she had to fight against being marginalized in the civil rights movement because of her gender, so she had to push back against being marginalized in the feminist movement because of her race. She did so not with anger or bitterness but with determined grace. She spoke of this during a book signing at the Library of Congress in 2004: "I have been in the proximity of, and threatened by, the Klan; I have been called everything people of color are called; I have been denied admission because of a quota. I've had all of that, but I've also learned that getting bitter is not the way."
Ms. Height never gave up the fight. Even as her age advanced, she continued to advocate for black families, preach self-reliance and despair over the lack of voting rights for the District. Recently, when she thought a worthy tennis program for children was threatened, she put her prestige on the line. Just as words can't fully capture her, so they fail to describe the void left by her death.”

Community Organizing Manual of the People’s Leadership Council
I. BOLDY embrace the virtues and lives of each person who enters the door.
BLESS each day at the beginning and ending of each gathering
CONSCIOUS serving, attending and listening
LISTEN without interruption and resist the temptation to solve or develop a plan.
EXPERIENCING diversity by paying attention to differences. There are no outsiders.
SAFE HAVEN for all who enter: child care, transit, personal space, sustenance.
ALL are sacred whether child, adult or leader.
ALL are equal and prized.
STAFF are available twenty-four seven to open and sit down, offer a space for counsel.
CONCRETE service of each person who is embraced as a gift of the clan.
EACH moment is precious and finite. Each breath a blessing, each step a prayer.
FOLLOW the people.
LIFT up the voices of new leadership and talent serving the community.
SING, DANCE, and CREATE a sanctuary of the heart that rejoices in living.
WIN every time that a campaign is started the expectation is to complete the task.
Provide intimacy for listening and dissonance to have a place of honor.
HONOR every being on earth.
TRUST and Respect every one, cherish their presence.
KEEP clear and precise notes and archives of the day to day lives of the clan.
MEET a new person every day and sit and listen with integrity.
DAILY schedule of discipline and care of one’s speech and one’s spirit.
PRACTICE forgiveness, loving kindness, compassion “SHIRH”
GIFT the community every day with precious life and will.
REGARD each other as sacred bodies and spirits to benefit all of us.
WORK hard and resolutely for a just community, we are all citizens.
CITIZENSHIP stands above all else as the highest ideal.
STEWARDSHIP is the responsibility to care for one another and the world.
GRACIOUS TOWARD EVERYONE, EVERYONE IS MY MOTHER AND I'M EVERYONE'S MOTHER!

Nothing is finished until the last breath.

II. A challenge to all beings:
• Criticisms
• Arguments
• Complaints
Take a band and put it to your right wrist.
Every time that you use criticism, arguments or complaints switch the wrist on which you wear the band.

Keep the band on your wrist twenty-one days without changing sides.

When you have succeeded celebrate.

Criticism, blame, misery, complaint, arguing cause you to feel badly.

Get rid of them and the whole world will revel in your success.

III. “A Picture of Poverty” by the Agency for Human Rights and Community Relations--- the “Parent” Agency for the Denver Women’s Commission-- is now available on our website: www.denvergov.org/humanrights. It looks at poverty in the City and County of Denver through various community lenses.
www.denvergov.org/humanrights
African American
American Indian
Asian American
Formerly Incarcerated
GLBT
Immigrants and Refugees
Latino
Older Adults
People with Disabilities
Women
It includes census and other quantitative data, but also original research using online survey and interviews of services providers and individuals living in poverty. Includes recommendations for addressing the challenges related to each community.

IV. “Trauma Release Exercises” Dr. David Berceli: Intervention that works to relieve stress and increase recovery from trauma. The efforts of Psoas muscles trembling trains the body to release the tension from violent responses of “fight or flight,” to attack in a natural process of the central nervous system. This process regularly applied takes about an hour to practice and begins to retrain the body to eliminate tension. His training is being employed in diverse settings throughout the world where people are literally exposed to trauma from the onset of their lives. For the DVD one can go to www.namastepublishing.com and study these rudimentary exercises.

V. “Younger Next Year,” by Chris Crowley and Dr. Lodge, explores responsibilities of living well and efficiently, getting rid of stress and living a balanced life. These are the tenets:
Eat small meals
Eat fresh and raw foods
Commitment to a purpose that can do all of one’s life
Companionship in sticking to the tasks
Exercise vigorously daily
Drink water, nothing with sugar, salt, additives and processed
If adhered to one does not have to diet, but one has to eat sensibly for nutrition
Everyone can expect to live a full and healthy life until they reach their eighties.
Half of all illnesses and chronic diseases that afflict us are eliminated

VI. Epitaph: SHIRH: Loving Kindness, Compassion, ..........................

What consequence can be greater than being homeless?

I agree that it is invaluable to apply whole heartedly toward being active and grounded in a meaningful pursuit.

Who is more competent in determining the length and breath of commitment of a person without a permanent, stable and safe place to live than a person who has seen and felt the sting of being cut off from everything?

Anyone who has seen the "Gangs of New York," knows that this entrenched problem has been at front and center of the American landscape since the first days we set foot on this island.

It's time we acknowledged the rights of people to a safe and stable place as they're born and they step forth on the road as all age in place. We're all responsible for the lack of this housing and thereby blaming someone for being poor or lost is unconscionable.

All you have to do Mr. Diamond is look in the mirror and you will see me staring back at you. We're the same and with compassion and patience many will achieve greatness and many will not and we must embrace them all, just the same.

A challenge to all beings:

• Criticisms
• Arguments
• Complaints
Take a band and affix it to your right wrist.

Every time that you engage in any criticism, arguments or complaints then switch the wrist on which you wear the band.
Keep the band on your wrist twenty-one days without breaking the promise.

When you have succeeded celebrate.

Information from Census 2010- There is still work to be done! Please help spread the word to folks who may not have yet completed their census form.

It's not too late! Phone your answers in

After April 17, Census workers will go door-to-door to collect Census information. It's not too late, please encourage your friends, acquaintances, and family to mail back their Census questionnaire or phone in their responses!

To make it even easier, you can call the US Census Bureau to give them your answers or ask for assistance over the phone. Call:
ENGLISH - 1-866-872-6868
Chinese: 1-866-935-2010
Korean: 1-866-955-2010
Russian: 1-866-965-2010
Spanish: 1-866-928-2010
Vietnamese: 1-866-945-2010
TDD (Telephone Display Device for the hearing impaired): 1-866-783-2010

Canvass with us on Saturday, April 24

Join us on Saturday, April 24, 2010 to canvass Denver in conjunction with the Denver Scholarship Foundation, College for Everyone, Colorado Progressive Coalition, University of Denver's Center for Civic Engagement and Service Learning and the Agency for Human Rights and Community Relations at 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Canvassers will go door-to-door and speak with residents about the importance of the Census in the City and County of Denver. Food will be provided by LÄRABAR and Old Chicago. Canvassers will meet at Manual High school located at 1700 East 28th Ave., Denver, CO 80205. Contact Yvonne Garcia at 720-913-8854 or yvonne.garcia@denvergov.org to RSVP.



How to identify a Census worker

Census workers will knock on your door if you don’t return your form. Here’s how to identify a legitimate Census worker and questionnaire:
If you are contacted by a Census worker, you can call 1-800-852-6159 in the Denver region to make sure the individual is legit. The Census worker will also wear an official identification badge and will carry a U.S. Census Bureau bag.
The Census questionnaire and Census workers never ask for money, donations, bank account information, full social security numbers, requests on behalf of political parties, PIN codes, passwords or credit card information.
The Census Bureau does NOT conduct the 2010 Census via the Internet
The Census Bureau does not send emails about participating in the 2010 Census
If you believe you have been contacted as part of bogus or fraudulent activity falsely representing the Census Bureau:
Forward the email or web site URL to the Census Bureau at ITSO.Fraud.Reporting@census.gov. After you forward the email to us, delete the message. You will not receive a confirmation email after forwarding the information to us. However, the Census Bureau will investigate the information and notify you of its findings.
You may also call the Denver regional census office at 303-264-0202 or 1-800-852-6159.

A challenge to all beings:

• Criticisms
• Arguments
• Complaints
Take a band and put it to your right wrist.

Every time that you use criticism, arguments or complaints switch the wrist on which you wear the band.

Keep the band on your wrist twenty-one days without changing sides.

When you have succeeded celebrate.

Criticism, blame, misery, complaint, arguing cause you to feel badly.

Get rid of them and the whole world will revel in your success.

Ballast for the Sinking Ship: My Sister’s Crossing on the Queen Mary II Cancelled

This had nothing to do with the ship or the water. No ice bergs ahead fore or aft. The problem is in Iceland with spewing ash that cancelled all flights to get to England. The ship was grounded by foul weather that many are concerned may be spreading and continuing to thwart the already unsteady airlines industry. The claim has been made that 200 million dollars a day is lost in revenue of the airlines. That is an extraordinary amount of income. There is a new claim that all of commerce and industry will be curtailed in economic recovery because if we do not spend money we do not make money and hence, commerce and industry halts.

The difficulty in this assessment of the matter is that we live on Earth, albeit a challenging and fragile ecosystem, which we have distorted since the Industrial Revolution. We have been riding the tiger’s back and it has been a tumultuous ride lately. We wonder when this era of unsettled conditions will cease its present course. The answer frankly is, “never.” Our paradigm of conflict with nature and of success is what has to be altered.

Flatly, the earth will not sit still while we find the means to destroy everything. Already governments like the United States have been having their way waging war and mass destruction and the days of reckoning for this tragic error are about to take their own course with the consequence that whether we like this or not that most of the world as we have experienced this last century is about to precipitously change.

Can we adapt? Some have said that we always lived on the edge of starvation and annihilation. We have always lived on a precarious bubble, which may finally burst leaving most of the modern industrial world in ruins. Are you ready for the inevitable ride, because like a carousel wheel this one keeps going round and round? Where we stop no one knows but what is essential for us to remember that the quality of life is more interdependent and inside of our consciousness. You cannot do evil, exploiting everyone and everything, and expect nothing of consequence. You cannot plunder the world’s assets and live as though there is no tomorrow. This is abundantly clear in my sister’s passage as much as at any time of our ancestors.

1 in 3 Americans Failed to Return Census Forms
By SAM ROBERTS New York Times
Published: April 16, 2010

"Nearly one in three Americans failed to return their census questionnaires by Friday’s official deadline, the Census Bureau said.

More forms were expected to be received over the weekend. Census workers will not begin going door to door until May 1 to count people who did not return their questionnaires by mail.

As of early Friday, the mail participation rate was 68 percent. The mail participation rate, which the bureau is using this year for the first time, is the percentage of forms mailed back by households that received them.

Unlike the mail response rate, which the census used in earlier counts, it excludes forms returned by the postal service as undeliverable, often because a house or apartment was vacant. The mail response rate was 67 percent in 2000. If the undeliverable forms had been excluded then, the mail participation rate would have been 72 percent.

Final rates for this year’s count will not be posted until early May, so it was unclear whether this year’s unprecedented publicity and marketing campaigns had reversed a decades-long decline.

Wisconsin logged the highest participation rate of any state, 78 percent, followed by Minnesota (76 percent) and Iowa (75 percent). The lowest rates were in New Mexico (59 percent) and Louisiana (60 percent). Livonia, Mich., recorded the highest rate, 85 percent, among places with 50,000 or more people.

An analysis by the Center for Urban Research at the City University of New York found that 10 percent of counties had exceeded their 2000 rates by five percentage points or more. Some of the urban neighborhoods typically considered hardest to count appear to have been among the highest-rated areas this time.

The research center said the gains might be a result of the Census Bureau’s advertising campaign and community outreach as well as changing demographics.

In big cities, predominantly black areas tended to have lower participation rates than mostly white ones. Detroit was an exception. While Hispanic areas generally logged lower participation rates, that was not the case in Miami, Newark and New York."

Commentary: Randle

The census has been conducted for over two hundred years every ten years by an act of Congress in 1790. At the end of April enumerators will be paid about twenty dollars an hour to get the job done over the months of May, June and July. The government was hoping that a massive marketing blitz would reverse the trend of people failing to provide this confidential data. It costs a considerable amount of money to collect the missing data.

All during March and April there were people stationed in the lobby of social service agencies who were encouraging people to fill out census forms. They indicated in the human services office that many people have stooped to cooperate with the census. Still the nagging question is how can this be done more efficiently?

As one spokesperson for the census bureau stated, " People have to realize that this is extremely important information that we are collecting for funding basic services and taking care of the infrastructure of the communities in which we are living." There is not a single resident who is not directly impacted by the census. Then why don't more than 3/5 of the citizens participate? Maybe we should be examining why we do not have a higher rate of participating as citizens in every aspect of American life from voting to paying taxes? Perhaps the answer underlying these issues relates more to the quality of life and the educating of our citizens from early life that being a citizen is a responsibility of being born.

We need to educate our children and our neighbors that being here is a responsibility like brushing your teeth and washing. Being alive makes it mandatory that all of us care for the world in which we live and one another and that means registering to vote, voting and filling out the census.

When we consider the effort that was made by municipalities like the City and County of Denver to collect this data we are hard pressed to find a reason why our rates are not the highest in the nation at the goal set of 80%. The answer to this dilemma has nothing to do with the will of the people but more the common inability for Americans to take their lives as citizens for real. If you want to thank someone thank those who are dedicated citizens, neighbors and parents for the making America work.

LET’S TALK NUKES

By Helen L. Burleson, Doctor of Public Administration

There is a valid reason why many countries, especially the smaller countries do not trust the United States of America. There is a justifiable rationale for why so many countries do not have respect or confidence in the United States of America. We, Americans, of course, love and respect our country and want her to do well under any set of circumstances.

We must admit that we have always talked tough and carried a big stick and have not hesitated to use our big stick whenever we felt threatened; and, even occasions where we were not threatened. The reason why we now occupy this country is because we fought the Native Americans. The Indians had bows and arrow and we used muskets and cannons. It’s no surprise that we won because the Indians were out gunned.

In the history of the world, we, Americans, are the only people who have used atomic energy to end a war. Both the physical and human destruction of Nagasaki and Hiroshima left millions displaced and many mangled or dead.

Now we have a president who believes the combination practice of moderation, negotiation and compromise is a valued premise upon which our foreign policy should be based. This is not only wise, but sane and humane. It means we will not take unfair advantage of those who pose no threat or harm to us; and, if they do not have nuclear weapons, we will not use ours to settle disputes. The president, prudently left open the option of reserving the right to use nuclear weapons if we are threatened based on actionable intelligence that imminent danger comes from a country poised to attack us with nuclear power; and, then we will meet such force with force. This equalizes the playing field and reduces tensions among smaller nations who may feel the pressure to develop nuclear weapons to defend themselves against any pre-emptive strikes that we may launch. This they know from experience can and did occur in Iraq. Such potential can cause smaller nations to fear for their safety. A frightened people are an irrational people and irrational behavior can wreak havoc of unimagined proportions. An example of this is Afghanistan, where George Bush sent troops in to go after the Taliban and Al-Qaida. This war which President Obama inherited is now being called Obama’s war. In order to bring this war to a conclusion, President Obama ordered additional troops in hopes that a stronger input of force could reduce the time required to defeat the Taliban and to reduce American tragedies. History may not be on his side in this conflagration, given the propensity of this nation to produce so many Afgahani people willing to commit suicide in order to take out as many of their perceived enemy as they can.

Many people think that war means that we go into a country, kill a lot of people and beat them down until they surrender. There is another side to that coin – the loss of innocence and loss of life of the fruit of our wombs – our future leaders, innovators, states people, teachers, doctors, nurses, engineers and others who could contribute to society in a positive way. What about those lives? What about those mothers, those wives, those children, those brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts and other relatives who only have left a flag, some ribbons or some medals. How many of you welcome and relish the opportunity the meet a flag draped coffin as it returns to our shores after being killed on foreign shores? I don’t think that enough of us think of the human toll caused by war. War is not always inevitable. War and weapons of war should be used wisely, and with great discretion, and only as a means of self defense.

This new policy of nuclear stand down is the wisest, sanest, and safest policy that we could conceive of. What happens to smaller countries when they fear the big stick? They have one alternative and that is to develop nuclear weapons to defend themselves. So far there are a limited number of countries that have nuclear weapons and we know who they are and the extent of their stockpile.

I applaud President Obama for attempting to deescalate nuclear proliferation. The President is to be commended for making us safer by demonstrating to the world that he is a man of peace who wants to solve problems with right not might. Thank you again, Mr. President for trying to bring peace to the world through honest dialogue, communications, understanding and reconciliation. It will not be perfect, for man knows no perfection; but, it is a step in the right direction and our children and their children will thank you for making the world a more tranquil place where they can grow up without the fear of war.

According to the Bible, there will be wars and rumors of wars, but we owe it to ourselves to keep them to a minimum.