Invitation to All. August 29, 2015, the New Orleans Cultural Heritage Festival. City of Los Angeles, California

Greetings All!

On Saturday, August 29, 2015, the New Orleans Cultural Heritage Festival will be held at Leimert Park Village located at Vernon Avenue and Crenshaw Boulevard in the City of Los Angeles, California from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.

Exactly ten years ago on August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit the City of New Orleans with devastating consequences. Over 2,000 residents were killed by the storm and thousands more were either missing or displaced from the Crescent City. Many of the displaced residents were forced to relocate to other cities around the nation, including Los Angeles, the City of Angels.

I am a sixth generation New Orleans native.  Many of my family members and friends were deeply affected by Hurricane Katrina. My former neighborhood, childhood home, grammar school, high school, and church were all destroyed.  Many former residents are deceased or displaced and still in need of assistance. There will be testimonials at the event from those who have survived the storm.

This festival will serve to celebrate the unique culture, heritage, music, and cuisine of New Orleans; featuring second-line dancers, live entertainment, arts and crafts, as well as a variety of Creole, Cajun, Soul, Southern, and Vegetarian food dishes. This will be a ten-year commemoration and celebration of those who have survived one of the most catastrophic events in United States history.

The event is sponsored by the Universal Multi-Cultural Awareness Foundation, Inc. (UMCAF); and endorsed by the Offices of Mayor Eric Garcetti, Council President Herb Wesson, Jr., County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, the Empowerment Congress West Area Neighborhood Development Council (ECWANDC), and the Louisiana to Los Angeles Organizing Committee (LALA).

We hope that you are able to come out and join us in the day’s activities. The program will include testimonies from Katrina survivors, ten years later. The New Orleans Cultural Heritage Festival is both a commemoration of those who have survived that tragic event; and a celebration of the life, times, and victorious struggles of those who have valiantly persevered. In the New Orleans tradition, even through the most difficult of times, our people say; “Laissez les Bon Temps Rouler!”  Let the Good Times Roll!

Sincerely,

Ms. Sylvia Jones,
President/CEO, UMCAF, Inc.

--

Andrew Williams, Jr.  TRN International News

Mobile: +1-424-222-1997   Skype; andrew.williams.jr

Goodwill Ambassador
Twitter: AWilliamsJr     Facebook Business    Facebook Personal

One Earth, one humanity,and one crisis. Sept 21-25 2015. Join Prayers for Climate Action at the Lincoln Memorial

Join Prayers for Climate Action at theLincoln Memorial

Faith Events

Observe Yom Kippur 2015 at the Lincoln Memorial  Kol Nidre, 9/22 6:30pm to 8:30pm Morning Service with Yizkor, 9/23 10am to 1:30pm Minchah/Neilah, 9/23 5:00pm to 7:45 pm, concluding with shofar blasts

RSVP   for Yom Kippur 2015

Multi-faith Vigil at the Lincoln Memorial 9/23 7:00pm to 9/24 7:00am The Franciscan Action Network will be leading an all-night, multi-faith vigil at the Lincoln Memorial because, as Pope Francis and so many others have pointed out, there's one Earth, one humanity,and one crisis.

Open Letter to the Ministers of State and the Public Societies of Canada-US-Mexico

The Law of Exceptions

Open Letter to the Ministers of State

and the Public Societies of Canada-US-Mexico

NAFTA and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

October 27, 2011

Greetings.  Today the ancient arc of pilgrimage of the Nations and Pueblos of the Indigenous Peoples of Anahuac, Turtle Island and Abya Yala [the Americas] purposefully intersects once more with the trajectory of the government states whom you represent on our continent.  Today the traditional representatives of the Wixarika Nation bring the case of the Defense of Wirikuta, sacred heart of Mexico, to the fore of the national, international and global agenda of discussions on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and the Rights of Mother Earth.  As Nican Tlacah, we are on a pilgrimage of purpose to generate the collective understanding necessary among all human society for the sacredness of life itself to be lived, to be celebrated, and to be protected in the homelands and sacred shrines of the Indigenous Peoples.

Today in Mexico City, and at the Canadian Embassy in Mexico a petition demanding respect and protection for the sacred sites of the Wirikuta is being delivered to the Mexican and Canadian governments. We here-now, Nican Tlacah Izkalotecah, extend our solidarity and commitment to rectify the historical and social injustices that have created the immoral and illegal complicity among corporate interests and government officials who should be defending the common good and not acting as agents of corporate profits. 

Context

Within the provisions of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) among your governments, each nation-state reserved the right to deny investors rights or preferences provided to “aboriginal peoples”, “socially or economically disadvantaged minorities”, or “socially or economically disadvantaged groups” in from two to five designated areas.  These provisions of exception are cited in Annex II, as follows:

·       “Canada reserves the right to adopt or maintain any measure denying investors of another Party and their investments, or service providers of another Party, any rights or preferences provided to aboriginal peoples,”

·       “The United States reserves the right to adopt or maintain any measure according rights or preferences to socially or economically disadvantaged minorities, including corporations organized under the laws of the State of Alaska in accordance with the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act,”

·       “Mexico reserves the right to adopt or maintain any measure according rights or preferences to socially or economically disadvantaged groups,”

In reference to these provisions of exception of NAFTA, professor Valerie J. Phillips correctly stated, “All three nation-states remembered indigenous peoples, but only long enough to put them in their place. All of these exemptions simply continue the ongoing nation-state subordination and marginalization of indigenous peoples.”

The terms subordination and marginalization are only the skin of the beast.  The actual process which has been ongoing since October 12, 1492 is genocide and colonialism, implemented via trade agreements and economic development policies that favor the process of colonization by European American “white” elites continentally and their corporate accomplices.  The Niña, the Pinta, the Santa Maria, the Mayflower: the NAFTA and the NARCO.

The invasion of Turtle Island Abya Yala continues, yet our resistance, as Indigenous Peoples is also unbroken.  We resist and rebel, we regenerate and call out once more today for rectification and clarity, purpose and solidarity as children of the Nations and Pueblos of Mother Earth.

Clarifications:

From the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, adopted by the UN General Assembly September 13, 2007:

Article 32


States shall consult and cooperate in good faith with the indigenous peoples concerned through their own representative institutions in order to obtain their free and informed consent prior to the approval of any project affecting their lands or territories and other resources, particularly in connection with the development, utilization or exploitation of mineral, water or other resources.


It is evident that the of lack of processes and accountability for violations of the Right of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent for Indigenous Peoples is a fatal flaw not only the consultations which led to the NAFTA as a regional commercial compact, but for the actual ongoing implementation of the agreement.  The case of Wirikuta in Mexico is mirrored in the crisis of the Tar Sands in Alberta, Canada and Mt. Tenabo in Nevada as well as scores of other development projects impacting Indigenous Nations across North America including the San Francisco Peaks in Arizona. The violation of the right of Free, Prior and Informed Consent extends across the entire spectrum of economic development programs that are promoted and protected with preferential policies by the governments of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) regime.

The violations of the Right of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent is systemic under the neoliberal policies of these states, as is their complicity in the criminal exploitation and expropriation of the natural resources and labor of our Nations and Pueblos.  This is a grave foreign policy issue of crisis that must be addressed under the standards of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, adopted by the UN General Assembly on September 13, 2007.

Focusing in on the US context of the issues, Anthony Bothwell, remarks that the European taking of America involved “the most extensive land fraud and the largest holocaust in world history”.  He argues persuasively that, within the United States, the Supreme Court distorted international “laws” or doctrines regarding conquest and discovery to “rationalize white supremacist usurpation of Indian nation sovereignty, even while conceding that the great injustice may have violated international law principles”.  Bothwell goes even further than the mere analysis of then-existing international laws to assert that the taking of America violated binding treaties, the law of nations as recognized in the U.S. Constitution, as well as the Supremacy, Commerce, Takings, Contracts, and Fifth Amendment Due Process Clauses of the U.S. Constitution.

Yet, in spite of these assessments and predictions of the Master’s Narrative, today the Wixarica speak to the World once more from the ceremonial ground of Mexico in pilgrimage of purpose and clarification. The Cuachichilcameh Izkalotecah respond and relay the following message, once more:

Continental Proclamation

Abya Yala

Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues

Fifth Period of Sessions  May 15- 26, 2006

United Nations   NY, NY

Recalling the memory, will and spirit of our ancestors of time immemorial, they who gave origination to we the Indigenous Nations of the Continent Abya Yala,

Reclaiming the power of destiny as Peoples of Humanity,

In safeguard of the Rights of the Future Generations of our Nations of Indigenous Peoples,

Invoking the ancestral mandates of our Continental Confederation of the Eagle and the Condor, and the respective pronunciations ratified in Continental Summit of Indigenous Peoples in Quito, Ecuador 2004, and in Mar de Plata, Argentina 2005,

WE HEREBY PROCLAIM

Presenting ourselves as Nations of the Indigenous Peoples of our continent Abya Yala before this Fifth Period of Sessions of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues of the United Nations, and upon being received as such by the convoking authorities on the floor of the General Assembly,

That the Papal Bull Inter Caetera of Pope Alexander VI (1493) is hereby ANNULLED, as well as whatever Doctrine of Discovery proceeding from which that pretends to deform the relationship of Harmony, Justice, and Peace of we the Indigenous Peoples of Humanity in its entirety.

May 18, 2006

CONCLUSION

We call upon the ministers of government at all levels of Canada-US-Mexico and the public constituencies of their respective societies to address without prejudice or discrimination the above clarifications. We assert that these clarifications command rectification of the crime of colonialism and a moratorium on all NAFTA economic development projects impacting the territories of the Nations and Pueblos of Indigenous Peoples until the right of Free, Prior and Informed Consent of the Indigenous Peoples is fully recognized, respected, and protected in the spirit of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, as follows:

“Affirming that Indigenous Peoples are equal to all other peoples,…..”

NAHUACALLI

Embassy of Indigenous Peoples

www.nahuacalli.org

Boston. 100 Resilient Cities. May 19, 2015

http://www.cityofboston.gov/news/default.aspx?id=20127

Mayor Walsh and the Rockefeller Foundation's 100 Resilient Cities Host "KickOff" Workshop Marking Beginning of City's Participation in Innovative Global Urban Resilience Initiative

Workshop Brings Together Key Stakeholders to Develop City's "Roadmap to Resilience"; Hiring of Chief Resilience Officer Will Ensure Strategy Responds to Overarching Issues Facing Boston

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For Immediate Release May 19, 2015 Released By: Mayor's Office

For More Information Contact: Mayor's Press Office 617.635.4461

BOSTON – Tuesday, May 19, 2015 – Mayor Martin J. Walsh today joined 100 Resilient Cities (100RC) - pioneered by The Rockefeller Foundation - to kick off the process of developing a comprehensive resilience strategy that will enable the city to better survive, adapt and grow no matter what kinds of chronic stresses and acute shocks it experiences. The workshop brought together local officials and civic leaders, as well as engineers, architects, economists, faith leaders, academics and urban planners from around the city to participate in discussions on shared priorities and the essential elements for our preparedness plans.

“Thanks to 100 Resilient Cities and The Rockefeller Foundation, Boston has a real opportunity to address lingering social and economic impacts of our history,” said Mayor Walsh. “This workshop is a first step towards creating a tremendous resource and will move Boston towards a stronger, more resilient future.”

Boston’s initiative includes a unique focus on social resilience. Forty years after the busing crisis, Boston remains a city affected by divisions of race and class that undermine community cohesion. Gaps in health, educational and economic outcomes are evidence of how these fissures weaken resilience. The goal of the 100RC Initiative is to find ways to infuse the principles of resilience into all aspects of local planning, ensuring the city's ability to weather and recover from the physical, social and economic crises that are increasingly prevalent in the 21st century.

In the months following today’s workshop, the city will continue to engage those stakeholders, resilience experts and 100RC staff in drafting the plan. As part of the process, Mayor Walsh is seeking applicants for the position of Chief Resiliency Officer (CRO) for the City of Boston to ensure Boston's resilience strategy incorporates and responds to the overarching issues facing Boston, including racial and socio-economic inequity, the lack of affordable housing, unemployment and underemployment, violence, climate change, flooding and terrorism. The position is funded through 100RC.

The CRO will report directly to the Mayor and will support the development of a resilience strategy and policy discussion in the city that includes an assessment of our social resilience opportunities and challenges. The CRO will also work with external stakeholders towards a shared vision on economic development, transportation, housing, climate change and the arts. Boston residency is required for this position. Interested applicants can apply at the City of Boston’s website: http://www.cityofboston.gov/ohr/careercenter/

In December 2014, Mayor Walsh announced that Boston had been selected as one of 35 cities from around the world to join the 100RC Network, which supplies its member cities with tools, funding, technical expertise and other resources to build resilience to the challenges of the 21st century. 

“City governments are on the front line of dealing with acute shocks and chronic stress,” said The Rockefeller Foundation President Judith Rodin. “Boston is part of a group of cities leading the way on resilience to better prepare for, withstand, and recover more effectively when disruption hits. Through this type of inclusive resilience planning cities can be better prepared for the unexpected. T hey can also realize the resilience dividend, the economic and competitive advantages that come from taking a resilience mindset. Boston’s commitment to resilience thinking, planning and action will set a global example.”

“Boston is helping fuel global momentum around building urban resilience, and leading by example,” said Michael Berkowitz, President of 100 Resilient Cities.  “The agenda workshop will clarify the city’s needs, surface innovative thinking, and give us a blueprint for engaging partners from across sectors to bring Boston the tools and resources needed to become more resilient.” 

About 100 Resilient Cities – Pioneered by The Rockefeller Foundation:

100 Resilient Cities – pioneered by The Rockefeller Foundation -- is dedicated to helping cities around the world become more resilient to the physical, social and economic challenges that are a growing part of the 21st century. 100RC supports the adoption and incorporation of a view of resilience that includes not just the shocks but also the stresses that weaken the fabric of a city on a day-to-day or cyclical basis. Examples of these stresses include high unemployment; an overtaxed or inefficient public transportation system; endemic violence; or chronic food and water shortages. By addressing both the shocks and the stresses, a city can better respond to adverse events and is more capable of delivering basic functions in good time and bad, to all populations.

The 100 Resilient Cities Challenge was launched in 2013 as a $100 million commitment to build urban resilience. Officials or leaders or major institutions from over 700 cities have applied to the Challenge. The first cohort of 32 cities was announced in December 2013, and 100RC announced their second cohort of 35 cities in December 2014. Information on the Challenge itself is available at www.100resilientcities.org/challenge. 

An FAQ can be found at: http://www.100resilientcities.org/pages/100RC-FAQ#/-_/

Media Contact for 100 Resilient Cities: Maxwell Young – Myoung@100RC.org

Olympics Summer Games in Caribbean, or African Union member nations. Just a dream.

Just a dream.

Selection of Haiti, or an African Union member nation as Summer Olympic host games. Imagine the physical infrastructure, jobs, business development that could take place in a country such as Haiti, Cuba, Barbados, Benin, Malawi, Kenya, Ghana, or any other nation in need of renewal, and revitalization.

A dream and imagination can make it possible.

CDS. CEO. BLACK EMERGENCY MANAGERS ASSOCIATION