big ups.... Karibu Books, African American Bookstore Chain Expands to Baltimore, Maryland

On Wednesday, November 23rd 2005, Karibu will open the doors of its first expansion store in a new market, Baltimore, Maryland, Security Square Mall. Security Square fits perfectly with the company's concept of bringing a highly specialized product and service to Black communities. Across the country, African-Americans are reading at a larger rate than ever. It is the birth of what many call a “new renaissance” in African-American literature. Karibu believes if there is “access” people will buy! They are confident the customers in Baltimore will value their product, service and take great pleasure in the “Karibu Experience.”

YOU'RE INVITED Saturday, December 10th 2005, to Karibu's GRAND OPENING CELEBRATION! Come out and meet the Karibu Team, enjoy a fun filled day of raffles, giveaways and performances by Sistah Joy, poet and author of the best-seller, Lord I'm Dancin' As Fast As I Can and host & co-producer of the new Prince George's County poetry cable TV program, Sojourn With Words. Click here to read more

K'Alyn presents "soul of solitude"

click flyer for larger view and detail
K'Alyn
"soul of solitude"
wednesday, nov. 23rd
@ busboys and poets
14th and V st., nw
washington, dc
9pm
$7
(suggested donation)

Property taxes taxing small businesss owners

NW Businesses Fear Skyrocketing Taxes Will Push Them Out
Prosperity Threatens Independent Owners

By Eric M. Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 20, 2005; C06

Ben's Chili Bowl is a symbol of the District's homegrown history as well as the recent resurgence of U Street NW.

But being an icon comes with a price tag. Because of rising real estate values, the restaurant's property taxes are going up 150 percent next year as its assessment rockets from $438,310 to $1.1 million. Ben's will have to sell 3,929 more chili dogs just to cover the additional taxes.

"You're a victim of your own success," said Nizam Ali, one of the Chili Bowl's owners. His family appealed an earlier assessment that would have increased taxes by 234 percent.

It's not just happening to Ben's. Down the street, Lee's Flower and Card Shop, where four generations from one family have served the neighborhood, will have its assessment rise by $400,000. And the New Vegas Lounge, the storied blues club at 14th and P streets NW that is now surrounded by Whole Foods Market and condominiums, is bracing for a 35 percent tax increase next year.

Some city business owners worry that rising taxes will do what riots, recessions, crime and crack did not: push them out. If they do go, they will take with them much of the eclectic character that has made such places as U Street a magnet for the new and affluent. And if the past is prologue, these longtime independent businesses could be replaced by those that can afford the higher taxes and rents: national chains such as Starbucks and the Gap.

"It's happening all over the city under the radar because these properties have been so undervalued," said Stanley Jackson, deputy mayor for planning and economic development, adding that the administration of Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) is trying to ease the crunch. "We don't want to kill the golden goose." Click here to read more

Hueman Prophets

I have not heard the album yet, but based on what i already know of these two cats and all the buzz on the message board; i am sure it will stay in my disk changer or in constant rotation on my ipod (when i get one..hint hint my birthday is right around the corner, well kinda ....april 14th)
I am not sure when i first came in contact with these young brothers, but i can say that I have always been impressed and inspired by their range and depth and the intensity with which that attack their art and craft. I was totally blown away by the portion of their play they presented at this years DC HipHop Theater Festival.
I look forward to more from these brothers!

check them out here: Hueman Prophets website

around my way...

Barry Now Backs Soccer Stadium, Sees Help for Ward

By Robert E. Pierre
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 16, 2005; B08

The effort to build a soccer stadium at Poplar Point, overlooking the Anacostia River, got a boost last night as D.C. Council member Marion Barry told hundreds of residents that the proposal could be a boon to communities that have longed for new investment.

"At first I was opposed to a stadium at Poplar Point," the former mayor told hundreds of people at Ballou Senior High School during an event sponsored by D.C. United and the Anacostia Coordinating Council.

Barry (D-Ward 8) said he changed his mind after he realized that the plan could bring as much as $1 billion in new investment to his ward and provide more than 3,000 units of housing, some of which would be set aside for first-time homeowners and those earning low wages. "It makes sense," Barry said. "A stadium by itself didn't make sense." Click here to read more

"Dance The Guns to Silence: 100 poems for Ken Saro-Wiwa" -11/19 @ 5:30, BusBoys and Poets

Saturday, November 19, 5:30 PM - Book Presentation, "Dance The Guns to Silence: 100 poems for Ken Saro-Wiwa" Presented by African Writers Abroad. Feauring: Sonia Sanchez, plus Fred D'Aguiar, E. Ethelbert Miller, kalamu ya Salaam, Tony Medina, Ogaga Ifowodo, Theodore Harris, Rachael E. Griffths, Kamilah Aisha Moon, and guest poet from the UK, Rommi Smith. MC - Kadija Sesay. Busboys & Poets, corner of 14th & V, NW, Washington, DC. www.busboysandpoets.com **

NIkki Giovani @ Karibu in Bowie 11/19

Award-winning poet, writer, and activist!

NIKKI GIOVANNI

Saturday, November 19th

5:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.
KARIBU BOOKSTORE
Bowie Town Center

301.352.4110
Discussion, Q&A and Book Signing
Rosa - Illustrated by Bryan Collier
Ages 5 and up – Rosa Park's personal story moves quickly into a summary of the Civil Rights movement in this striking picture book. A few events of the movement are interjected–the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, the aftermath and reactions to the murder of Emmett Till, the role of Martin Luther King, Jr., as spokesperson.

Nikki Giovanni is one of our best-known and best-loved African American poets. She is the author of numerous books for adults and young readers, with her newest poetry collection published in November 2003 by William Morrow. She teaches creative writing at Virginia Tech and lives in Christiansburg, Virginia.

Bryan Collier is the author and illustrator of Uptown, winner of the Coretta Scott King Award and the Ezra Jack Keats Book Award. He is also the illustrator of Martin’s Big Words, which was a Caldecott Honor Book. The Chicago Sun-Times has called Collier’s art “breathtakingly beautiful.” Mr. Collier lives with his family in Harlem in New York City.

If you are in the ATL this weekend.....

Doors @ 8PM
Show @ 9:30PM
21 AND UP
$12.00 Admission

click flyer for larger view and detail
21+
Doors 9PM
Admission: $10/advance
$15/Day of show

Both shows at :
Apache Cafe 64 3rd. St NW
Atlanta, GA 30308 USA

BLACK DIAMONDS featuring DEBORAH BOND, ANGELA JOHNSON & BILAL SALAAM!!! @ Black Cat 11-11-05

Blast into today's Funk, Soul, & R&B when 3 emerging artists showcase their sonic diamonds in the rough -- namely, Deborah Bond, Angela Johnson (of Cooly's Hot-Box), and Bilal Salaam.

Deborah Bond's sound tempers the heat of Chaka Khan and the chauntese-cool Sade, as heard on DayAfter, which spawned the radio single "See You In My Dreams" and the international club anthem, "This Is Me". Tonite, Deborah and her diabolical band, Third Logic will preview tracks from their spring-release, unleashing passion driven songs that will undoubtedly soundtrack your tommorow. This evening's jam also features co-headliner, Angela Johnson, whose voice can also be heard heralding Cooly's Hot-Box's WHUR hit, "Makes Me Happy," as well as her solo single, "Ordinary Things." Angie's new disc, Gotta Let It Go, and her career as a singer/keyboardist/producer has drawn comparisons to Patrice Rushen and Minnie Ripperton. Setting up this evening's scene will be the lean croonings of Bilal Salaam, performing cuts from Nu Hustle, his debut disc, that will be sure to put him out front in his own light.

It goes down,..

Friday, November 11th
@
The Black Cat
1811 14th Street, NW
(14th & S Streets)
Doors Open @ 9:30PM/ Show Starts @ 10PM
Tickets are $12 -- On-Sale Now at Ticketmaster
Groovin' All Ages

*Deborah Bond photo by Kimberly Gaines
www.sondaiexpressions.com

W Ellington Felton NYC @ SUGAR BAR

Event Information:
Friday, November 11, 2005
7:30 PM - 12:00 AM
21+
cover: $10.00

Venue Information:
SUGAR BAR
254 WEST 72 STREET
New York, NY

http://www.fusicology.com/events/?rid=3&id=1563

Furious Flower Poetry Documentary @ BusBoys & Poets 11/12/2005, 4-7 pm

If you love African American poetry you will not want to miss this screening of all 3 parts of this documentary at Busboys and Poets located at the corner of 14th & V streets, NW, Wash. D.C. 20009.

The following is from California Newreel

"The time cracks into furious flower
Lifts its face all unashamed
And sways in wicked grace..."
"This is the urgency: Live!
and have your blooming in the noise of the whirlwind."
- Gwendolyn Brooks, The Second Sermon on the Warpland

This 3-part program provides the definitive teaching tool for exploring the world of today's Black poetry. Providing a more focused, ambitious approach than its 1998 predecessor, Furious Flower II presents outstanding critical scholarship on Black contemporary poetry's origins and trends, its conflicts and consonances. Throughout, notable authors share insights and offer inspiration to fledgling poets about the creative process, and about daily life as a published writer.

Interspersed with these critical conversations are impassioned readings of the most representative poems of each poet. Viewers can watch as one of America's most exciting cultural movements evolves before their eyes and ears. Click here to read more

Why Race Isn't as 'Black' and 'White' as We Think

Why Race Isn't as 'Black' and 'White' as We Think

The New York Times
October 31, 2005
Editorial Observer

By BRENT STAPLES
People have occasionally asked me how a black person came by a "white" name
like Brent Staples. One letter writer ridiculed it as "an anchorman's name" and
accused me of making it up. For the record, it's a British name - and the one
my parents gave me. "Staples" probably arrived in my family's ancestral home
in Virginia four centuries ago with the British settlers.

The earliest person with that name we've found - Richard Staples - was hacked
to death by Powhatan Indians not far from Jamestown in 1622. The name moved
into the 18th century with Virginians like John Staples, a white surveyor who
worked in Thomas Jefferson's home county, Albemarle, not far from the area
where my family was enslaved.

The black John Staples who married my paternal great-great-grandmother just
after Emancipation - and became the stepfather of her children - could easily
have been a Staples family slave. The transplanted Britons who had owned both
sides of my family had given us more than a preference for British names. They
had also given us their DNA. In what was an almost everyday occurrence at the
time, my great-great-grandmothers on both sides gave birth to children
fathered by white slave masters. Click here to read more

around my way...

Housing Surge and Resurgence
New Homeowners Changing Southeast Neighborhoods

By Robert E. Pierre and Dana Hedgpeth
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, November 7, 2005; A01

The 65 new brick townhouses of a development called the Townes at Hillsdale sit high on a hill and offer their residents expansive views of Washington's monuments and the river beyond. The manicured lawns and cul-de-sacs would not be out of place in Montgomery or Fairfax counties.

But this development is in the District -- not in Northwest, but east of the Anacostia River, in a vast expanse stretching from south of the 11th Street Bridge to Bolling Air Force Base that has been known mostly for its negative attributes: crime, poor schools and unemployment.

In recent years, however, a steady stream of couples and thirtysomethings has left the Maryland and Virginia suburbs to settle in homes like these, which were built on the site of a 1960s-era apartment complex where drug dealers once ruled and stray bullets regularly disturbed the peace.

Since 2000, more new housing developments, totaling nearly 8,000 units, have been built in the area -- which includes the neighborhoods of Anacostia, Barry Farms, Congress Heights and Shipley Terrace -- than anywhere else in the District except near downtown. Click here to read more

big ups....

Big ups to Dominic Redd a.k.a DJ DREDD, who with his wife Jennifer just opened a Restaurant and Lounge called Vegetate (1414 9th Street NW, Washington, DC 20001 • TEL 202.232.4585). Be sure to go out and support it and let them know DivineCipher.com sent you.

Spike calls for a "rebirth of cool"

Spike urges a smarter kind of cool
Educated blacks should be icons, filmmaker tells MTSU audience
By KATE HOWARD
Staff Writer

Published: Thursday, 11/03/05

When controversial filmmaker Spike Lee was growing up in Brooklyn, he said last night, he aspired to be like the educated black men he saw reading books and going to college.

Today the images in society glorified by gangsta rap — pimping and violence — are overtaking the role education should play, Lee said during a lecture at Middle Tennessee State University's Alumni Memorial Gym.

"Young black kids didn't grow up wanting to be a pimp or a stripper like they do now," Lee said of his own youth. "You might think I'm making generalizations, but I don't think I am. That's how serious this stuff is."

Speaking as part of MTSU's second biennial International Conference on Cultural Diversity, Lee had a message that basically was this: College-age students need to take the initiative not only to learn but to make it cool again to be intelligent. His appearance drew two standing ovations from the packed crowd.

"When I was young, cats going to college got as much (love) as the ones who could rap or play ball," Lee said. "Back then, we were not called sellouts for using our brains. And being intelligent was not frowned upon."

The whole world sees the culture that America exports, Lee said, and it's not this country's nuclear weapons that influence the world.

"We are dominant in the world because of our culture," Lee said. "We can control the way people think and talk and dance, and that is how I define power."

Many of hip-hop's heroes amount to minstrel performers in Lee's opinion. The pimping and gangsta personas are what sells right now, Lee said, and rappers may not be wearing blackface, but they are presenting an image of what it means to be black like minstrel shows of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Reggie Google, a recent MTSU graduate who was in the audience, agrees with Lee that this image is far from the truth.

"If the record industry puts money behind it and we allow the media to run with it, we end up presenting the image that this is what it is to be black in America," Google said.

Michelle Carter, a senior psychology major at Fisk University, said she agrees with Lee's message that hip-hop is dominating the vision of who black people are.

"You can't look at rap and hip-hop and say, 'That's how black people are,' " Carter said. "Not all of us are like that."

Lee said that his body of work, from his debut film She's Gotta Have It to Malcolm X to the documentary he's working on about Hurricane Katrina, intend to show just the opposite: the breadth of diversity of the black experience.

"We do not all think and talk alike, and I've been struggling to get that message through Hollywood," Lee said. "And I will continue to bring that message." •


Published: Thursday, 11/03/05

Milloy speaks to the Hilltop (HU's newspaper)

The Hilltop - Campus Issue: 11/3/05

Courtland Milloy Speaks to The Hilltop
By Ruth L. Tisdale

Preparing for his 16-year old son's sweet sixteen party yesterday, Courtland Milloy was surprised to hear that Howard students were going to be protesting outside of the Washington Post office.

"I had no idea that they would be protesting," Milloy said during a phone interview yesterday right before his son cut his birthday cake. "Otherwise I would have made sure that I was there."

Milloy's last two columns featured in the Metro section of the Washington Post angered students because of its insinuation that Howard students were not politically active.

In his columns, he raised eyebrows, by saying that "Howard is not some hotbed of political activism, and that the biggest event of the year is Homecoming, which features two fashion shows, a step show and lots of hip-hop celebrities."

Milloy who has written more than 300 columns on Howard, said he never expected the cloud of controversy that his latest two had caused.

" Almost 99 percent of the articles that I write are positive, and I never hear from students," he said. " You say something good about them and they brush it off and you wonder if anyone is listening. You write a piece like today [Nov. 2] and you say why 'Wow maybe they do.'"

Milloy said that he is harder on Howard students because "they are the talented tenth." Click here to read more

events to check out today (Thurday) and tomorrow (Friday)

November 3, Thursday, 6:45 pm
Poet Laureate of Louisiana Brenda Marie Osbey
Library of Congress,
Montpelier Room, Madison Blg.,
101 Independence Ave. SE, DC.
(202) 707-1639.
FREE.

Thursday, November 3, 7:30pm
Thomas Sayers Ellis
Georgetown University
Intercultural Center (ICC)
Room 116
Washington, DC
FREE

Friday Nov 4th, doors open @ 8pm
MALCOLM JAMAL WARNER @ MIRRORS: 33 NY AVE, only $10
click flyer below to enlarge view and for more info

2 Courtland Milloy columns on Howard U...

How Bush Visit Became the Siege Of Howard U.

By Courtland Milloy
Sunday, October 30, 2005; C01

It was Soul Food Thursday at Howard University last week, and many students were looking forward to their favorite meal: fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, collard greens and cornbread. At lunchtime, however, students discovered that much of the campus had been locked down and that the school's cafeteria was off limits.

Apparently, many of them did not know that President Bush and first lady Laura Bush had arrived for a "youth summit" at the Blackburn Center, where the dining hall is located. Stomachs began to growl, tempers flared, and, eventually, a student protest ensued.

In case you missed the broadcast Friday on Fox 5 (WTTG-TV), reporter Robbie Chavez was at Howard trying to interview protesting students when a campus security guard showed up and tried to stop him.

Chavez: The university went to great lengths . . .

Guard: I'm asking you to leave the campus now.

Chavez: . . . to hide angry protesting students . . .

Guard: I'm warning you, you don't do that.

Chavez: . . . a big effort to keep a lid on the growing frustration.

During the protest, dozens of students locked arms around a flagpole in the Quadrangle, a designated forbidden zone at the center of the campus, and refused to move despite warnings from campus security that Secret Service rooftop snipers might open fire on them.

You'd have thought Howard had taken a page right out of the Bush administration playbook on quashing First Amendment freedoms. In a letter posted the day before on a university Web site, President H. Patrick Swygert wrote that, having notified the campus via e-mail in July, he was sending a reminder of the Bush visit. But students complained that they hadn't seen either message and criticized school officials and the Bush administration for poor planning.

Chavez said: "This is what university police and the Howard University administration did not want publicized: students angry after being shut out of parts of their own university."

What might have been a public relations coup for Bush -- a visit to a historically black college to show concern for at-risk youths -- ended up as another Katrina-like moment, with the president appearing spaced-out, waving and smiling for television cameras while students were trying to break through campus security to get to the cordoned-off cafeteria.

Of course, the episode was nothing compared with all the other bad news Bush got last week, including the indictment of White House aide I. Lewis Libby on perjury charges. But what happened at Howard was illustrative nonetheless of how a seemingly minor mess, easily avoided by a more attentive White House, could have repercussions down the road.

The Republican Party is trying hard to win over black voters before the midterm elections, and Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele needs the support of black Democrats in his bid to become the first black Republican in the U.S. Senate since Howard alumnus Edward Brooke of Massachusetts (1967-1979). So one thing Bush didn't want was a ruckus during a visit to Howard.

All he had to do was drop in on Soul Food Thursday, be seen sharing a wing and some collard greens with students -- and score one for the GOP.

But the visit went from bad to worse. On a day when the U.S. Senate passed a resolution paying tribute to civil rights icon Rosa Parks, who died last week, campus security guards were telling students that if they wanted to eat they'd have to come back when the president and first lady were gone, then go to a service door at the rear of the dining hall and ask for a chicken plate to go. Never mind that a student meal plan at Howard can cost as much as $2,500 a semester.

Howard is not some hotbed of political activism. The biggest event of the year is homecoming, which features two fashion shows, a step show and lots of hip-hop celebrities. As the rapper Ludacris put it in his summer hit, "Pimpin' All Over the World":

Jump in the car and ride for hours,

Makin' sure I don't miss the homecoming at Howard.

To set off a student protest at this school, you'd have to be politically tone-deaf in the extreme, out of touch and flying blind. And yet, Bush did it.

God help us in Iraq.
E-mail:milloyc@washpost.com
© 2005 The Washington Post Company


click on read more to see the other column.

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