Sunday, December 4, 2016

DHS Reverse Industry Day (January 10, 2017) Register Now in FAITAS!

The next Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Reverse Industry Day (RID) is fast approaching. After the overwhelming success of the first and second RIDs, the Office of the Chief Procurement Officer will be hosting a third event on Tuesday, January 10, 2017.  This full-day event is a unique opportunity to engage with industry representatives to learn more about industry processes and methodologies related to identifying and tracking DHS opportunities, pricing, proposal preparation, and various contract performance considerations.  Past events have featured important topics such as demystifying the private sector, how vendors decide whether to bid (or not) on a solicitation, and factors affecting innovation and the participation of non-traditional vendors.  You will have an opportunity to ask specific questions of the industry panel members and hear from Chief Procurement Officer Soraya Correa as well as other DHS senior leaders about the importance of your role in industry engagement and how it directly supports the DHS mission.

RID is a no-charge, resident event in support of Acquisition Innovations in Motion and the Secretary’s Unity of Effort initiative.  It is designed to improve DHS’s understanding of industry practices related to identifying, tracking, pricing, bidding, winning, and performing on DHS contracts.  The purpose is to provide the acquisition workforce an opportunity to learn about the issues that are most important to industry when doing business with the Department. 

This event will be held on Tuesday, January 10, 2017 from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM EST and is available for registration via FAITAS; look for FCL-DHS-0041. Step by step registration instructions are below.  Space is limited, and on a first come first serve basis, so register soon.
*Please note that registration MUST be completed by Wednesday, January 4, 2017, before 11:59 pm.  

8 CLPs will be given for participating in this event. 

Date: Tuesday, January 10, 2017
Location of Event: Omni Shoreham Hotel  2500 Calvert St NW, Washington D.C. 20008
Time: 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM EST (Registration begins the morning of the event at 8:00 AM)
Parking: Valet available at hotel for $49/day
Metro: Woodley Park-Zoo Metro Station (Red Line)


HOW TO REGISTER IN FAITAS:
·        Login to FAITAS - https://faitas.army.mil/faitas
·        Click “Manage Career/Training/Search for Training” link
·        Select the top-right radio button under the Standard Search to “Order by Course Number”
·        Select “Course ID” from the drop down list (Example: FCL-DHS-0041), and click submit
·        Select the location (Example: Washington, DC)
·        Click on the Class # (Example # 001)
·        Then click on “Submit Request” button at bottom of page


Best regards,


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2017 Presidential Inauguration. Work in D.C.? Do you really want to got to work that day?

Federal employees in the Washington, D.C. metro area only will have to report to work for three days during the week of Jan. 16.

The Office of Personnel Management confirmed the plan is for federal workers to be off on inauguration day, Jan. 20. 

Acting OPM Director Beth Cobert wrote a memo explaining that every federal employee around the country will be off on Jan. 16 in commemoration of Martin Luther King Day.


Additionally, she said federal employees who work in the “Inauguration Day area,” which is defined in law as the District of Columbia, Montgomery and Prince George’s Counties in Maryland, Arlington and Fairfax Counties in Virginia, and the cities of Alexandria and Falls Church in Virginia, will be off on Jan. 20 as well.

“The legislative history states that the holiday was established to allow employees working in the inauguration day area to attend the nearby inaugural ceremonies and to avoid the traffic problems and work disruptions that would occur if employees were required to report for duty,” Cobert wrote.
OPM also clarified how telework agreements will work on Jan. 20.

Employees who are scheduled to telework on inauguration day at a location within the DC metro area are off that day no matter where their official worksite is located.

Employees who are scheduled to telework on inauguration day at a location outside the DC metro area are not on vacation that day, again, no matter where their worksite is located.

Additionally, agencies are strongly encouraged to let federal employees telework or work an alternative work schedule the other three days of the week.


“In addition, federal employees who work in the downtown Washington, DC, area and its vicinity should expect significant commuting delays and travel disruptions on Wednesday, January 18 and Thursday, January 19 due to extensive road closures, mass transit changes, motorcades, and the establishment of security perimeters,” Cobert wrote. “To help alleviate traffic congestion and minimize distraction to law enforcement and security officials, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is urging agencies to permit employees to use their workplace flexibility options on Wednesday, 

January 18 and Thursday, January 19. Accordingly, OPM strongly encourages agencies to allow employees to telework to keep the federal government operating while helping to minimize traffic congestion and support law enforcement efforts during these events. Employees may also request to use their alternative work schedule day off, annual leave, leave without pay, previously earned compensatory time off, and/or earned credit hours under a flexible work schedule.”

Saturday, December 3, 2016

Mark your Calendar. December 15, 2016. Methods of Communication in Disasters.

Mark you calendar.  One of our members (Ms. Alicia Hamilton) will be presenting on how communities can come together.      CDS.  CEO BEMA

Webinar: Methods of Communication in Disasters— Preparing to Receive, Provide and Act on Critical Information in Times of Crisis
FEMA’s DHS Center for Faith-based & Neighborhood Partnerships and FEMA’s Individual and Community Preparedness Division invites you to a webinar on Thursday, December 15, 2016. Representatives from FEMA will be joined by faith and community leaders to highlight various methods that governments and communities can use to communicate with one another and the broader community in disasters. This webinar will also feature preparedness activities and resources to effectively receive, provide and act upon critical information.
Date: Thursday, December 15, 2016
Time: 1:00 – 2:30 p.m. EST
Featured Speakers:                                 
  • Antwane Johnson, Director, FEMA Integrated Public Alert & Warning System
  • Martin Pittinger, FEMA Office of the Chief Technology Officer
  • Kaylynn Beck, FEMA External Affairs
  • Chaplain Yisrael Bursztyn, New Jersey Chaplains Association
  • Alicia Hamilton, PACRED and The Revelation Network
  • William Patterson, Los Angeles Amateur Radio Club
  • Moderator: Jannah Scott, DHS Center for Faith-based & Neighborhood Partnerships
How to Join the Webinar:

The Last Poets. 1970's

The Last Poets: America in poetry from black power to Black Lives Matter

The Last Poets: Umar Bin Hassan, Jalaluddin Mansur Nuriddin and Abiodun Oyewole.
The Last Poets, left to right: Jalal Mansur Nuriddin, Abiodun Oyewole and Umar Bin Hassan. Photograph: GAB Archive/Redferns
“The Last Poets are the microcosm of black America,” said Umar Bin Hassan, one of the founding members of the group, when I first met him in Harlem, New York, a decade ago. And he’s right: the turbulent and sometimes violent history of this legendary group of African American men who became famous worldwide in the late 1960s and early 70s with self-critical, militant poems (“Niggers are scared of revolution. Niggers love anything but themselves”) not only influenced generations of hip-hop and soul artists – such as Public Enemy, Ice Cube, Ice-T, 2Pac, Common, Mos Def and Erykah Badu – but also the likes of David Bowie and Mick Jagger. Their fluent and funky conga-rhythms transformed poetry into rap (a novelty at the time, though perhaps not today).

Umar Bin Hassan, now 68, is in a position to reflect on their remarkable collective strength, resilience and hope. The Poets always bounced back, no matter how much they struggled – and boy, did they struggle. Umar, in particular, lived on the streets as a crack addict for years and found success very hard to handle. Growing up in a ghetto, where he was told “You ain’t shit” from a very young age, Umar worked as a shoeshine boy in a red-light district to escape his father’s abuse. Racism, poverty and social exclusion left their destructive marks on him; as Bin Hassan put it in one of his autobiographical poems: “Self-hatred wrapped up in a twisted, demented but well-controlled smile.”
Umar Bin Hassan
Umar Bin Hassan Photograph: Hollis King
From the first moment I discovered the Last Poets – through my 11-year-old, hip-hop-obsessed son – and from the first time I met them, I was completely absorbed by their life stories and poetry, which continues to reflect today’s black America.
The Last Poets started out during the black power movement, in the years, months and days after Martin Luther King, Robert F Kennedy and Malcolm X had been murdered. They were young men living in the black ghettos of Akron, Ohio, Detroit, Michigan, Jamaica Queens and The Bronx – all desperately seeking a different life to that of their parents, who in their eyes were too subdued, too damaged by racial oppression.

Inspired by the music of John Coltrane, the glamour of the Temptations and the politics of black pride, they started performing on street corners in Harlem where they immediately gained a following. But it wasn’t until 1970, when Alan Douglas – the white record producer who made Jimi Hendrix a star – convinced them to record their first album (Douglas drove into the heart of Harlem in his silver Jaguar and appealed to them himself), that they experienced fame. It became an instant classic. “White death will froth the walls of museums and churches breaking the lies that enslaved our mothers when the revolution comes,” is recited on When the Revolution Comes. “The Statue of Liberty is a prostitute,” is shouted out, on New York, New York.

Listen to the Last Poets’ When the Revolution Comes – audio
Their poetry seemed stronger then themselves, visionary even. But despite their self-awareness, their scope for self-criticism didn’t prevent them from getting into trouble; Umar and Félipe Luciano (former leader of the Puertorican Black Panthers, now a politician) got mixed up in drugs; Jalal Mansur Nuriddin became a hustler; and Abiodun Oyewole was in prison by the time the first Last Poets album came out, and heard other inmates sing words he wrote from other cells.

When they were all together, they almost killed each other fighting over rights and money. It was all too much for some: the original founder of the Last Poets, David Nelson, retreated to his sisters’ house; fellow original member Gylan Kain moved to Europe. By the late 1970s, their popularity had declined. Their disintegration coincided with the downfall of the black consciousness movement in America; the FBI’s Cointelpro programme had infiltrated all the major black political organisations, the Black Panther party was in disarray and drugs were flooding into black neighbourhoods.

But the Last Poets were saved by their art. When young hip-hop bands such as A Tribe Called Quest started sampling the Last Poets’ words in their own raps in the early 1990s, Umar started writing poetry again. After hearing his own voice on the radio, Umar went to Abiodun’s house in Harlem and told him: “We still got something to say to the kids.” He started reciting new work: “Arrogance is the demon that will kill us, before the white men, before the drive-bys...”
It was the start of a new beginning. Umar and Abiodun began working together again, recording new albums, and collaborating with artists such as Common, Erykah Badu, and bands like Dead Prez. And they found peace. Since then, despite all their internal fights, they have performed together on stage at various points; wiser, a bit sadder perhaps, but no less inspiring or militant.
Christine Otten, Umar Bin Hassan Babatunde, Abiodun Oyewole
Christine Otten, with Umar Bin Hassan, percussionist Baba Donn Babatunde and Abiodun Oyewole. Photograph: PR
Writing a book about the Last Poets changed my life, not only as a person but as an author. After spending months in America with these audacious artists who were so far ahead of their time, I felt I could do anything as a writer, even making music with words, just like the Last Poets themselves. Artistically, they taught me to be completely free. And more broadly, they remain so relevant: race remains one of the most urgent matters of our time. Not only in America, where a new generation is fighting racism and police violence, but also in Europe, where xenophobia and racism have become more open, more common. Ultimately, the story of the Last Poets is about human resilience and beauty’s sustaining power. I remember Umar telling me: “You have to turn yourself inside out, until something raw and honest comes to the surface. Something unique, not like anything else.” I definitely had to turn myself inside out. And I am glad I did.

The Last Poets by Christine Otten, translated from the Dutch by Jonathan Reeder, is published by World Editions (£12.99).

The Last Poets will be visiting the UK 25-27 November and performing at Ronnie Scott’s, The South Bank Centre Being a Man festival, and Foyles bookshop. The Last Poets are presented by Apples and Snakes, the UK’s leading performance poetry organisation.

Students4Garvey” campaign. Exonerate Pan-African Leader Marcus A. Garvey. December 3, 2016

In the U.S. our history may not be taught in schools, but we must ensure our written and oral history are passed on to our future leaders.

BEMA

Dr. Julius Garvey, the son of the legendary Pan-African leader Marcus A. Garvey, was in Washington last evening for a “Students4Garvey” campaign event.  The campaign is centered around educating young African-Americans about the life and work of Marcus Garvey, and to encourage their letter writing to President Barack Obama to exonerate the record of Garvey.










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Office:   202-618-9097 
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Heights by great men reached and kept were not obtained by sudden flight but, while their companions slept, they were toiling upward in the night.                                            Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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Thursday, December 1, 2016

OCHA Haïti . Hurricane Matthew - Situation Report. November 30, 2016.

OCHA Haïti | Préparation & réponse aux urgences
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OCHA HAITI

30 November 2016
OCHA Haiti
Hurricane Matthew - Situation Report No. 26


Dear partners,

Kindly click here to view OCHA: Hurricane Matthew Situation Report No. 26 as of 30 November 2016.

Situation Report Main Points
  • Messages on the impact of looting and the scope of international humanitarian assistance were broadcast on 26 November through local radios in affected regions.
  • Amidst tension on the reopening of schools and eviction of displaced population in Jeremie, the humanitarian actors will provide direct emergency assistance to displaced populations hosted in public schools to enable their safe return to their place of origin.
  • Some 121 schools are being rehabilitated in Grand’Anse, Nippes, South, and North-West departments. These efforts will benefit approximately 40,000 children of the 150,000 who have been out of school since the hurricane.
  • From 4 October to 22 November, WHO/PAHO registered 7,959 suspected cholera cases.
OCHA

Domestic Violence. A marker as simple as how someone treats their pets.

Although domestic abuse has seen a decline in recent years, there are still millions — millions — of Americans who endure it each year. Not only is it a terrible way way to live — domestic violence victims never deserve to be abused, period — it’s behavior that should never be tolerated.

To show our support for those in abusive relationships, we wanted to share some helpful articles that we hope will provide some hope:










If you are a victim of domestic violence, please know that you deserve better, and there are many ways to get the help you need. If you’re not comfortable contacting your local law enforcement agency, consider reaching out to an anonymous hotline:
The National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-SAFE (1-800-799-7233)
Crisis Text Line: Text START to 741741

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