The January 12 earthquake in Haiti has created a humanitarian crisis that may well exceed any such event in the history of the western hemisphere. Even the low estimates of death and suffering are staggering.

AABL encourages you to contribute to relief efforts. There are several easy ways to do this:

• contribute generally to the International Red Cross via the link below; on the RC donation page there is a general fund and a Haiti-specific fund.
• contribute to the foundation representing the new Haiti Fund established by former presidents Bill Clinton and G.W. Bush.
• from your mobile phone, send a text message to 90999 with the single word "HAITI" in the message body; your account will be charged $10, which will be included in your next bill; NOTE: this may result in text messages from cell phone advertisers; if this is a concern use another method.

For those able to do so, there is no limit on the number of text messages ($10 bills) you can send or monetary donations you can make.

Caution: Numerous scams have already appeared. Don't compound the tragedy by replying or responding to email or telephone solicitations. Don't click "Donate Now" links in email messages. If you want to donate to an organization, type its website address directly into your Web browser and press Return. Or make a donation by telephone. We vouch for the websites linked from this article.

Over 100 works by members of Uganda Art Consortium will be on display May 8, 9 and 10 in the largest exhibit and sale of Ugandan art ever held in the U.S. The show is part of the Ballard May 2009 Artwalk.

Works include oil paintings, wood block prints, vat dye paintings, silk screen prints and other media. Beadwork jewelry produced by children in UAC's free workshops for AIDS patients and orphans will also be on sale. Artists included in the show include Kizito Fred Kakinda, James Nsamba, Kennedy Baguma, Matias Tusime, Hassan Mikiibi, and Hadson Mbabazi.

The exhibition will be held at the Ballard Bookcase Gallery, 4611 11th Ave. NW Seattle, WA 98107. For more information, visit Ugandart.com.

Ugandart - Info and gallery

The throngs at the inauguration of Barack Obama as US president included AABL co-founder Michael Twiggs and his wife Juanita. They traveled from Washington State to attend. The accompanying photo shows them near the Lincoln Memorial with the Washington Monument in the background. They report weather was cold, but the city was warm.

Let me see if I have this straight.....

If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're "exotic, different."

Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, and yours is a quintessential American story.

If your name is Barack you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.

Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you're a maverick.

Graduate from Harvard Law School and you are unstable.

Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you're well grounded.

If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have any real leadership experience.

If your total resume is: local sports reporter, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking executive.

If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real Christian.

If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a Christian.

If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.

If, while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state's school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant, you're very responsible.

If your wife is a Harvard graduate laywer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values don't represent America's.

If you're husband is nicknamed "First Dude", with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.

OK, much clearer now.


(From the mailbag. -Ed.)

A group of Ugandan artists located in several towns around greater Kampala and calling themselves the Uganda Online Art Consortium have partnered with a US web publishing firm to produce an online gallery catalog of indigenous artworks. Many of these original works are for sale and can be purchased directly from the gallery.

Art fare includes paintings, sculpture, jewelry, woven and dyed cloth and more to come. Styles include both traditional and modern, with even the modern media assuming a strong East African cultural form. A growing number of examples may be seen at the gallery link below.

The impetus for the project came from US teacher Tom Herriman, a retired publisher and former Teamsters organizer who spent a semester in suburban Namsana near Kampala teaching language and music to children 10-16. Herriman's web host, Clark Internet Publishing, agreed to establish and operate the web site at cost plus basis, with all fees deferred until the project is financially self-sustaining.

(Clark Internet also hosts and partners with AABL.com.)

Uganda Online Art Consortium

Gayle Brill Mittler and Robert Kersey had one common vision when they first formed GEEBEE Marketing. They wanted to create a complete line of games, toys, and puzzles that would bring the vast rich and diverse history of America's nearly 15,000,000 citizens of African American descent into homes and classrooms. That was 1997.

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Activity and Game Info

As part of ongoing efforts to motivate young people to engage in the political process, the League of Young Voters Education Fund (LYVEF) recently teamed up with the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation's (NCBCP) Black Youth Vote! (BYV!) for an innovative civic participation training at North High School in Des Moines, IA. The youth later participated in the Black and Brown Forum Presidential Debate.

Organizers underscored the importance of voting in the Jan. 3, 2008 primary even though people of color make up less than six percent of the Iowa population.

Read more

Presidential hopeful Senator Barack Obama, music mogul Jay Z, Hollywood hot shot Tyler Perry are among the powerful 7 topping the list.

By category, here are their picks.

* Politics: Barack Obama
* News: Oprah Winfrey
* Music: Jay Z
* Business: Russell Simmons
* Entertainment: Tyler Perry
* Sports: Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith

Do you think they got it right? Comment or add your picks in the Forums.

Go there!

According to an editorial commentary from The Economist republished in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer an alarming number of black households are falling out of the middle class for a complex set of reasons. Nope, the traditional favorite culprit is not the main factor.

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P-I Article

The US Small Business Administration (SBA) offers increased services for disaster planning. Included are several planning guides and training documents.

They write "Getting back to business after a disaster depends on preparedness planning done today. Small business owners invest a tremendous amount of time, money and resources to make their ventures successful, and yet, while the importance of emergency planning may seem self-evident, it may get put on the back-burner in the face of more immediate concerns.

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SBA Info

New New York Times reported August 17 that Irene Morgan Kirkaldy, "whose defiance of white supremacy while traveling through the Upper South in the summer of 1944 led to a Supreme Court decision outlawing segregated seating on interstate bus lines, died Friday in Hayes, Va. She was 90.

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NY Times Article

According to The Washington Post and Associated Press, a South Carolina land developer will set aside land for a cemetery in a settlement with a family whose slave ancestors settled the land in the 18th Century.

According to family tradition, more than 100 ancestors were buried at the site in wood boxes without tombstones. Remains discovered during construction of an impending redevelopment will be transferred to the new cemetery. Twentieth Century land transfers had failed to provide for family access, and descendants had recently been excluded from visiting the site.

Source article

According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer a Seattle man has filed a lawsuit against the University of Washington charging both age and racial discrimination. He alleges that university human resource officials repeatedly offered him jobs for which he was overqualified and did not consider him for appropriate positions.

Seattle P-I Article

Outsourcing on the Web has become a major international business. The primary destination for Web work has been India, though the Philippines and China are also players.

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Numerous recent Seattle incidents point to a deeper problem that is capturing growing attention -- violent crimes in which the suspects and their victims are young, black and male. Numbers tell part of the story. According to the most recent census figures, blacks make up 8.2 percent of Seattle's population and 5.7 percent of King County's population. But nearly a third of those booked into the King County jails for homicides are black.

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Read the whole story at Seattle Post Intelligencer