Morehouse College - We Shall Overcome

Morehouse College Glee Club - I Can't Tarry

Perversion of Justice

  
     A Letter from Behind Bars on President's Day
Hamedah Hasan

Dear Mr. President,
       Today is President's Day. As the President of the United States, you have the unique and absolute power to commute the sentence of any federal prisoner. That means you could send me home today, and that is what I am asking you to do.
       From everything I have observed, you are a compassionate and just man. I pray that if you learn of the story behind my sentence, you will be moved to exercise your clemency power to give me a second chance.
       I am a mother and grandmother serving my 17th year of a 27-year federal prison sentence for a first time, nonviolent crack cocaine offense. I never used or sold drugs, but I was convicted under conspiracy laws for participating in a drug organization by running errands and wiring money. Had I been convicted of a powder cocaine offense, I would be home with my three daughters and two grandchildren by now. I have had a lot of time to think about where I went wrong, and I genuinely take full responsibility for my actions. But I hope you will see that over 16 years in prison is enough time for me to pay my debt to society.
       When I was 21 years old, I found myself in a horridly abusive relationship with a man in Portland, Oregon, who intimidated, cursed, slapped, punched and kicked me. I had my first child, Kasaundra, when I was 16 years old, and this man was the father to my second child, Ayesha. Even though my self-esteem at this point in my life was virtually nonexistent, in my heart I knew that this life wasn't what I wanted for myself or -- most importantly -- for my children.
        The only option I could see was to go live with my cousin, Ahad, in Omaha, Nebraska. Ahad set me up with a safe place to live, and most importantly, it was hundreds of miles away from my violent ex-boyfriend. Ahad recently wrote a letter in support of my commutation petition. In it, he accurately summed up the situation:
Her boyfriend was a gang member and his main goal in life was to be the best gang member he could be. He beat Hamedah all the time and threatened to kill her. She could not hide from him in Portland - he knew where everybody lived. He drank a lot and used drugs. It was not a good environment for Hamedah to raise her kids in, and it wasn't safe for Hamedah either. So she came to me in Omaha.
The thing is, Ahad was dealing crack cocaine. Although I never used drugs myself, it wasn't long before he asked me to run various errands and to transfer some money. He never held a gun to my head; I knew what I was doing, and I regret my poor decisions during this period of my life more than anything else. At the time, I felt out of options, and I believed that I needed to perform these tasks to show my gratitude for Ahad's help in escaping my abusive relationship.
       After less than two years, I decided to move back to my hometown in order to get away from the drug operation. I wanted my girls to grow up with their mother earning an honest living and leading by example. I enrolled in a welfare-to-work program and was getting back on my feet.
        But soon after I returned home, I was arrested, indicted and convicted of conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine from my time in Omaha with Ahad. I was sentenced to life in prison (later reduced to 27 years), based on the total quantity of drugs involved in the operation. I gave birth to Kamyra, my youngest child, in prison. That was one of the hardest experiences of my life.
       During my more than 16 years of incarceration, I have taken long, hard looks at myself. I've done everything in my power to redeem myself and to demonstrate through deeds that upon release, I will be a community asset, not a community liability.
        If you commute my sentence, I could have 10 years back on my life. Ten more years to make up for being so far apart from my daughters. Ten more years to realize my dream of starting a nonprofit dedicated to providing community services for the children of incarcerated parents. Ten more years to make a real, positive difference in the world.
        I hope you will give me that chance. You have said you believe the crack-powder cocaine sentencing disparity should be eliminated. I know Congress is considering legislation to equalize the federal sentences. You should understand, however, that none of the legislation being considered would apply retroactively to me.
       As much as I am cheering -- even from behind prison bars -- for a reform in the federal laws, I don't want to fall through the cracks. I still have a lot of living, mothering and giving to do.
       I would not be writing to you today unless I had no other option. I have appealed my case to the highest courts in the land, and you, and you alone, Mr. President, can send me home by exercising your executive clemency power to commute my sentence.
Sincerely,
Hamedah Hasan

Hamedah Hasan is a mother and grandmother serving a 27-year sentence for a nonviolent crack cocaine offense. Were Hamedah convicted of the exact same crime involving the powder form of the drug, she would be home with her family by now. She has three daughters, ages 16, 21 and 25, who live in Portland, Oregon. Upon release, Hamedah plans to start a nonprofit organization with the mission of empowering children with incarcerated parents.



http://www.november.org/thewall/cases/hasan-h/hasan-h.html

U.S. Marshal Says End the Drug War

Cops: Legalize Drugs to Save Our Lives

Maryland Cop Says Legalize Drugs to End Violence

I Need You

I need you, You need me, Jamie Scott and Gladys Scott need you, Please join with us as we pray to God to help us Stand for Fairness, Equality and Justice in our communities..
We ask God together to help Jamie Scott and Gladys Scott survive their ordeal as we stand for Justice together and show the example of God's Love !!
JUANITA BYNUM - I NEED YOU TO SURVIVE

We Need You Lord - Jonathan Butler

Rising into the Final Galaxies - Lena Horne's Star Trek Home

One can never forget the majestic, miraculous display of vocal maneuvering: with clarity, purity and supreme pleasure, that was rendered by this superbly talented artist, Lena Horne, strikingly lovely even at her advanced years, as she appeared -- suspended in time -- and blessed us in this film, The Wiz. It was rumored that grown men of her era paid good money over and over again for this film just to watch her sing "Believe in Yourself." Her remarkable rendition is enough to convince anyone to aspire to greatness for all time. Such is the validity of her gift to the world.

God bless you, Ms. Horne. Also God thank you for the incredible flower of her life to brighten up our world in this existence. May she spring forth to new life and radiate her beauty, voice and goodness in another plane.

Lena Horne - Maybe

Sesame Street: Lena Horne and Kermit Sing Bein' Green

Lena Horne - Stormy Weather (1943)

Lena Horne, Singer and Actress, Dies at 92

      
Lena Horne, who broke new ground for black performers when she signed a long-term contract with a major Hollywood studio and who went on to achieve international fame as a singer, died on Sunday night in Manhattan. She was 92.
Her death, at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, was announced by her son-in-law, Kevin Buckley. She lived in Manhattan. In a message of condolence, President Obama said Ms. Horne had "worked tirelessly to further the cause of justice and equality."


Ms. Horne first achieved fame in the 1940s, became a nightclub and recording star in the 1950s and made a triumphant return to the spotlight with a one-woman Broadway show in 1981. She might have become a major movie star, but she was born 50 years too early: she languished at MGM for years because of her race, although she was so light-skinned that when she was a child other black children had taunted her, accusing her of having a “white daddy.”

Ms. Horne was stuffed into one “all-star” film musical after another — “Thousands Cheer” (1943), “Broadway Rhythm” (1944), “Two Girls and a Sailor” (1944), “Ziegfeld Follies” (1946), “Words and Music” (1948) — to sing a song or two that, she later recalled, could easily be snipped from the movie when it played in the South, where the idea of an African-American performer in anything but a subservient role in a movie with an otherwise all-white cast was unthinkable.
“The only time I ever said a word to another actor who was white was Kathryn Grayson in a little segment of ‘Show Boat’ ” included in “Till the Clouds Roll By” (1946), a movie about the life of Jerome Kern, Ms. Horne said in an interview in 1990. In that sequence she played Julie, a mulatto forced to flee the showboat because she has married a white man.

But when MGM made “Show Boat” into a movie for the second time, in 1951, the role of Julie was given to a white actress, Ava Gardner, whose singing voice was dubbed. (Ms. Horne was no longer under contract to MGM at the time, and according to James Gavin’s Horne biography, “Stormy Weather,” published last year, she was never seriously considered for the part.) And when Ms. Horne herself married a white man — the prominent arranger, conductor and pianist Lennie Hayton, who was for many years both her musical director and MGM’s — the marriage, in 1947, took place in France and was kept secret for three years.
Ms. Horne’s first MGM movie was “Panama Hattie” (1942), in which she sang Cole Porter’s “Just One of Those Things.” Writing about that film years later, Pauline Kael  called it “a sad disappointment, though Lena Horne is ravishing, and when she sings you can forget the rest of the picture.”
Even before she came to Hollywood, Brooks Atkinson, the drama critic for The New York Times, noticed Ms. Horne in “Lew Leslie’s Blackbirds of 1939,” a Broadway revue that ran for nine performances. “A radiantly beautiful sepia girl,” he wrote, “who will be a winner when she has proper direction.”

She had proper direction in two all-black movie musicals, both made in 1943. Lent to 20th Century Fox for “Stormy Weather,” one of those show business musicals with almost no plot but lots of singing and dancing, Ms. Horne did both triumphantly, ending with the sultry, aching sadness of the title number, which would become one of her signature songs. In MGM’s “Cabin in the Sky,” the first film directed by Vincente Minnelli, she was the brazen, sexy handmaiden of the Devil. (One number she shot for that film, “Ain’t It the Truth,” which she sang while taking a bubble bath, was deleted before the film was released — not for racial reasons, as her stand-alone performances in other MGM musicals sometimes were, but because it was considered too risqué.)
In 1945 the critic and screenwriter Frank S. Nugent wrote in Liberty magazine that Ms. Horne was “the nation’s top Negro entertainer.” In addition to her MGM salary of $1,000 a week, she was earning $1,500 for every radio appearance and $6,500 a week when she played nightclubs. She was also popular with servicemen, white and black, during World War II, appearing more than a dozen times on the Army radio program “Command Performance.”

“The whole thing that made me a star was the war,” Ms. Horne said in the 1990 interview. “Of course the black guys couldn’t put Betty Grable’s picture in their footlockers. But they could put mine.”

Touring Army camps for the U.S.O., Ms. Horne was outspoken in her criticism of the way black soldiers were treated. “So the U.S.O. got mad,” she recalled. “And they said, ‘You’re not going to be allowed to go anyplace anymore under our auspices.’ So from then on I was labeled a bad little Red girl.”

Ms. Horne later claimed that for this and other reasons, including her friendship with leftists like Paul Robeson and W.E.B. DuBois, she was blacklisted and “unable to do films or television for the next seven years” after her tenure with MGM ended in 1950. 

25 Years After The Move Bombing

Amazing Grace - Wintley Phipps

Now you get mad...

                
What will it take for some people to wise up and acknowledge what is
Right....
We had eight years of Bush and Cheney, but now you get mad!
You didn't get mad when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and
Appointed a President.
You didn't get mad when Cheney allowed Energy company officials
To dictate energy policy.
You didn't get mad when a covert CIA operative got ousted.
You didn't get mad when the Patriot Act got passed..
You didn't get mad when we illegally invaded a country that posed no
Threat to us.
You didn't get mad when we spent over 600 billion (and counting) on
Said illegal war.
You didn't get mad when over 10 billion dollars just disappeared in
Iraq .
You didn't get mad when you found out we were torturing people.
You didn't get mad when the government was illegally wiretapping
Americans.
You didn't get mad when we didn't catch Bin Laden.
You didn't get mad when you saw the horrible conditions at Walter
Reed.
You didn't get mad when we let a major US city drown.
You didn't get mad when we gave a 900 billion tax break to the rich.
You didn’t get mad when, using reconciliation; a trillion dollars of
Our tax dollars were redirected to insurance companies for
MedicareAdvantage which cost over 20 percent more for basically the
Same services that Medicare provides.
You didn't get mad when the deficit hit the trillion dollar mark,and
Our debt hit the thirteen trillion dollar mark.

You finally got mad when the government decided that people in America
Deserved the right to see a doctor if they are sick.

Yes, illegal wars, lies, corruption, torture, stealing your tax dollars 
To make the rich richer, are all okay with you, but helping other 
Americans... I'm just sayin' !!!! 

Peace & Blessings

Rebbie Jackson talks about Michael's kids & his legacy