Tag Archives: civil rights

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Vets and Pay equality … VoteVets.org


www.votevets.orgWhen we were commissioned in the United States Army over forty years ago, pay equality was not an issue. Both of us were paid the same $450 a month paycheck we all received as no time in grade Second Lieutenants.

Pay was published in multiple formats and every soldier knew what America paid its men and women with zero discrimination for the youngest Private or Lieutenant to the oldest Command Sergeant Major or General.

But when our Soldiers leave the Army and enter the civilian workforce, life changes. And it changes more for our female veterans than for our males. Women on average receive about 25% less for equal work than their male counterpart.

We need your help fixing that.

Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), one of our great Senators, introduced S.84 – Paycheck Fairness Act on 23 January, 2013. In short, this act gets after the pay challenge for all American women, and our Veterans. It further goes after bosses who retaliate against employees who reveal their salaries to colleagues in an effort to produce the transparency in the civilian world that works so well in our Armed Forces.

But on multiple votes, the GOP has defeated the passage of this bill.

For that reason, VoteVets requests your support for Senator Mikulski’s Paycheck Fairness Act. Add your name to our petition in support of this important legislation.

Thank you very much for reading. After you’ve sounded off on this issue, please share this email with your family and friends.

We’ll be in touch as the legislation moves forward.

All the best,

Major General (Ret) Paul Eaton & P.J. Eaton
VoteVets.org

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Here’s a sneak peek at the results


Support the Museum today!
Support the Museum!

Recently, I asked several of you to take part in our Supporter Survey to help ensure the successful launch of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in 2016.

If you completed the survey, please accept my heartfelt thanks for providing your personal guidance as we make important decisions about our opening exhibitions, special events, and other programming.

We’re still analyzing the survey responses, but I wanted to share the results from one key question: “How do you feel about the Museum’s commitment to presenting painful episodes of the African American experience, such as slavery and the Jim Crow era, in addition to positive aspects?”

An overwhelming 95% of survey respondents agreed that it’s important for the Museum to include the negative as well as the positive when presenting African American history. These results reaffirm strong support for the Museum’s mission to bring the entire African American experience to life.

The survey answers will provide our curators, educators, and historians with a better understanding of how especially dedicated Museum supporters like you feel on a wide range of issues — from the periods and areas of African American history we should focus on, to how we can best increase public awareness of the Museum.

I hope you’ll help us put the insights we gain from the Supporter Survey to the best possible use — and help us raise the $250 million from private sources needed to match the funds Congress has approved to build the Museum. Can I count on you to make a special donation of $50 or more now?

With the personal support of people like you, we’re building a living, breathing museum that will educate all Americans about the central role that African Americans have played in our nation’s history … inspire a constructive national conversation on race … and foster understanding, healing and reconciliation. It’s a legacy you can be proud of.

Thank you again for your leadership and commitment as a supporter of the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

All the best,
Lonnie_Signature.jpg

Lonnie Bunch
Founding Director

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Aziz Ansari: Live at Madison Square Garden – Thanks Mom and Dad


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Petite Noir … “The Fall” & “The King of Anxiety”


A Spare, Minimalist R&B Video Influenced by Marina Abramovic

 

http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/10/petite-noir-music-video-the-fall/

 

Culture

By

March 10, 2015 1:30 pm

The video for “The Fall,” by the musician Petite Noir, whose EP “The King of Anxiety” is out now.
 It’s been two and a half years since the debut single “Till We Ghosts” introduced the world to the crooning, beat-heavy brand of indie rock proffered by the Belgian-born, Cape Town-raised, London-based musician Yannick Ilunga, who records as Petite Noir. Since then, he’s collaborated with Mos Def, signed with the U.K. label Domino, opened for Solange and been featured on her “Saint Heron” compilation album. But Ilunga would tell you his most notable achievement to date is coining the term “Noirwave,” a new, ideologically influenced artistic genre that identifies as African first, and everything else second. “The term ‘African music’ is so overused,” Ilunga says, “to the point that when some people say it, it just sounds cheesy. Noirwave was always meant to include clothing, art, photography, music obviously — all types of things. It’s taking the Africa that we know, turning it upside down and bringing people a new black. Solange is super Noirwave. So is Beyoncé. Noirwave is pop culture — it’s coming, but right now it’s just boiling.”

The same could be said of Ilunga himself, who recently released a debut five-track EP called “The King of Anxiety” (“a book of secrets,” as he calls it), a buzzy taste of the full-length album that will drop later this year. Having moved from Brussels to Cape Town at the age of 3, Ilunga grew up eschewing pop and traditional African music in favor of metal, rock, punk and electronica, as well as “whatever my brothers and sisters were listening to, whatever was trendy.” He counts all these genres as influences on Petite Noir, but notes that discovering Kanye West’s album “808s & Heartbreak” was the single defining moment of his musical education. “He was a black guy doing whatever he wanted to do, and he was of my time,” Ilunga says. “Of course, people like Michael Jackson were big influences, but when I started listening to them, they weren’t so big. Kanye was relevant.”

A standout on “The King of Anxiety” is “The Fall,” a pensive, meditative ode to the inescapable changes wrought by time, with a quietly anthemic refrain and minimalist orchestration that might call the XX to mind. Ilunga and his girlfriend, Rochelle Nembhard, directed the video for the track, a series of intimate moments shot in a film-noir palette; they star in it together, too. Ilunga and Nembhard face each other, sometimes gazing at each other with deep affection, other times slapping each other repeatedly in the face or playing the knife game. “The video is based on my real relationship, but it’s overexaggerated,” Ilunga says, adding that the video was inspired by “The Artist Is Present,” Marina Abramovic’s 2010 MoMA performance. “The first video we shot looked more like a timeline, and we scrapped that,” Ilunga says. “This video shows what a relationship in general is: our attempt to lose selfness and achieve unity. When we fall, we fall together.”

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Seuss on the loose in San Diego


By Chris Erskine contact the reporter

he San Diego History Museum is staging an exhibition dedicated to the art of Dr. Seuss, March 25 to April 19, at the museum in Balboa Park.

Titled “Ingenious! The World of Dr. Seuss,” the show will look at the breadth of Theodor Geisel’s artistic legacy, and will focus on seldom-seen images and artworks he did across nearly eight decades. Some of it celebrates iconic San Diego locations, such as the Hotel del Coronado.