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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. ■