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ELLC Looks to Strengthen Organizations Helping Young Black Males
By ADD SEYMOUR JR.
LOS ANGELES - What is the plight of African American
boys and young men in south central Los Angeles?
Charisse Bremond Weaver, head of Brotherhood Crusade,
a non-profit organization that works with at-risk young
black men in that area, answers that with a story.
“We took 75 young men on a retreat and the question
was asked, ‘How many of you young men have a relation
ship with your father?”’ she said. “Five of them raised their
hands. If you don’t know that there is a crisis, there is
your answer. We do not have enough black men as lead
ers in the community. It’s about leadership.”
Leadership is the issue that has united The Leadership
Center at Morehouse College, the Weingart Foundation,
The California Endowment, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation
and the office of Mark Thomas-Ridley, second district
supervisor for Los Angeles County.
They formed the Empowering Leadership in Local
Communities (ELLC) initiative, spearheaded by
Morehouse President Robert M. Franklin ’75. The
ELLC uses the Ethical Leadership Model - developed
and used by The Leadership Center - to teach south
central L.A non-profit organizations how to address
their own infrastructure issues and better equip them
to deal with the problems facing young black males in
their area.
Los Angeles is home to one of the largest
Morehouse alumni chapters and is one of the College’s
top student feeders.
Five south central L.A. community organizations will
be selected to spend a week at Morehouse in June 2011 for
a retreat to be trained in the Ethical Leadership Model.
They will then draft an implementation plan for their
respective organizations.
Their results will be analyzed and then used to expand
the program throughout California and then nationally.
“We’re talking about a message of hope for young peo
ple,” said Melvinia King, interim executive director of The
Leadership Center. “The model is based on three points:
character, civility and community. The theory is that we
have to be intentional on focusing on boys and young men
of color.. .but you have to have the infrastructure in place
to make this happen.”
The initiative’s early stages have been funded by The
California Endowment, which presented the College with
$150,000 during the Morehouse College Glee Club’s
February concert in L.A.; a $100,000 grant from the W.K.
Kellogg Foundation; and a $15,000 grant from The
Weingart Foundation.
A breakfast was held in Los Angeles in April to intro
duce the ELLC to nearly 20 community organizations.
From that group will come the five - selected by ELLC
leaders - that will be trained at Morehouse.
“This is an effort to take seriously an opportunity
to develop and cultivate a new generation of leader
ship in the greater Los Angeles and Southern
California community,” said Ridley-Thomas, who has
two sons who went to Morehouse. “Morehouse repre
sents something rather unique: the investment that is
made in this construct of ethical leadership, which is
quite promising as it relates to what can and should
happen in the greater Los Angeles area.” ■
Ping and Karume Talk About the Future for
Africa and Relationships With the U.S.
By ADD SEYMOUR JR.
Jean Ping
“OUR GOAL IS A NEW “WEST SHOULD OPENLY STAND
AFRICA,” SAYS PING FOR TRUE DEMOCRACY”
Amani Abeid Karume
WITH HELP from the African Union
(AU), Africa can become a more united,
peaceful and thriving group of states, said
AU Commission chairman Jean Ping.
“Our goal is a new Africa in a reformed
international system that we have compelled
to be more democratic [and] just,” Ping said
during his April 2011 speech at the Bank of
America Auditorium. “Our purpose is ren
aissance. The Africa that will come, and we
must strive for, is one in which the AU plays
its rightful role as the engine of the develop
ment agenda.
Ping was in the United States to attend
the Organization of American States con
ference in Washington, D.C., but took the
time to make his first visit to Atlanta.
Ping’s Morehouse appearance was pre
sented by The Office of Global Education
and the Andrew Young Center for
International Affairs, led by Julius Coles
’64.
The African Heritage Foundation, a non
profit group dedicated to elevating and pro
moting Africa’s image and profile in the U.S.,
co-presented Ping’s speech, which was
streamed online.
“Our trip to Atlanta is sort of a home
coming for us to come together with our
brothers and sisters in the diaspora to dis
cuss the future of our motherland, its union
and our future as Africa people in the rapid
ly changing international landscape,” Ping
said. “It is doubly significant that this dis
cussion is taking place in this location, in
this great institution.“
“WEST SHOULD openly stand for true
democracy,” says Karume
Former Zanzibar President Amani Abeid
Karume said the United States and other
Western nations have to support democratic
ideals if they really want peace in North Africa.
“The West should openly stand for true
democracy and stop supporting regressive
regimes for short-term gains,” Karume during
his April ?? lecture in the Executive Conference
Center. “Stable democratic regimes.. .will opti
mize the interests of those people and those of
the Western world.”
Karume’s lecture was sponsored by The
Leadership Center at Morehouse College and the
African Presidential Archives and Research Center.
He gave his insights on the results of the
revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia, largely led
by young people who used modern technolo
gy to communicate and mobilize quickly.
Citizens had tired of decades of poverty
and high unemployment by corrupt regimes
that had been supported at times by Western
nations, Karume said.
“The Western world has been so con
cerned with the stability of the Middle East
and ensuring the positive flow of oil and the
security of Israel to the point of forgetting the
principles upon which their own countries are
built,” Karume said. “The West had not read
the signs of the time and the need for change.”
Citizens in Tunisia and Egypt aren’t
anti-American, he said. But the U.S. and
other Western nations can atone for their
mistakes. ■
Nobel Prize Physicist Says
Clocks Will Change the World
By VICKIE G. HAMPTON
- r.t..
IT’S NOT EVERY DAY THAT A
PHYSICIST—a Nobel Prize winning
one, at that—breaks down complicat
ed concepts like “special relativity” and
light absorption so that an audience of
non-scientists can understand.
A presentation by William D.
Phillip of the National Institute of
Standard and Technology titled “Time,
Einstein and the Coolest Stuff in the
Universe,” was part lecture, part sci
ence experiment and part—well, fun.
He started with one of mankind’s
most profound questions—or at least a
variation of it: “What is time?”
And he went to an indisputable
expert on such mind-boggling, out-of-
this-world questions: fellow Nobel
Prize-winning physicist, Albert
Einstein.
And what did Einstein—the father
of modern physics, the man who even
lay people know as the e=mc2 dude—
have to say about time?
“Time is what the clock measures.”
To an audience of mostly non-scien
tists, the surprising answer drew some
chuckles. But, as Phillip said, “it
sounds superficial, but it is very pro
found.”
So, what could even a world-
renowned physicist teach us about
clocks that we didn’t already know?
That they’re all imperfect? Old
news.
That clocks are “marvelous works
of technology and art.” Try again.
That the rotating earth is our
biggest clock, “ticking” off days, and,
with the use of a sundial, even hours?
Though the earth is the biggest
clock, even it is imperfect because
things such as storms and ocean cur
rents affect its rotation.
Interesting, right? Earth as a
humongous clock; storms and tides
stealing milliseconds from our lives.
But that’s not the OMG news.
Turns out the best clocks in the
universe are atoms—the smallest
things around.
“Every atom of the same kind is
identical to every one in the universe,”
Phillip explained.
That means they vibrate at exactly
the same frequency without fail, mak
ing them the perfect “ticker.”
How good? Well, they measure
time with an accuracy of 1(M2 .
Huh?
In English this time: atomic clocks
are accurate up to 30 seconds per one
million years.
Impressive, right? Just one thing:
who could possibly care that a clock is
that accurate?
Actually, you do. There are 24
satellites in outer space with atomic
clocks. When you use your global
positioning system, three of them
work in tandem to triangulate your
location and “can pinpoint your loca
tion anywhere on earth within
meters,” said Phillip.
NIST is in the business of building
an even better clock—one that is accu
rate to 3x10 - 16 . Translation: one that is
accurate to one second in 1,000 million
years.
Okay, from here details about
freezing atoms and atomic fountains
and magnetic bowls degenerated into
Greek.
But there is a reason for accomplishing
such astonishing accuracy: quantum
computers.
As Phillip explained, bits are cur
rently 0 or 1. Quantum computers will
allow 0 and 1 bits at the same time.
According to computer geeks, that’s
like convincing a cave man of the ben
efits of a cell phone.
“They will do things no ordinary
computer or computers we can con
ceive of in the future can do.”
Seriously, wow. ■