Bank of America Shuts Out Minorities

A study released by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) found that Bank of America has few bank branches in minority neighborhoods and offers more mortgage loans to whites than African Americans or Latinos.

The study, issued last week, examined Bank of America's pattern of bank branches against its top two competitors in Buffalo, Chicago, Detroit, New York, Philadelphia, and St. Louis—cities ranked by the U.S. Census Bureau among the top-ten most-racially segregated in the country.

Two key findings of the study, "Shut Out of The American Dream: How Bank of America is Systematically Underserving Communities of Color and Harming Low-Income Families with Questionable Practices," revealed Bank of America fails to locate bank branches in majority minority neighborhoods regardless of the proportion of area residents who are minority and Bank of America is more likely to be the mortgage lender for a white borrower than for a black American in all the cities examined.

In four of the six cities, Bank of America ranked last in locating bank branches in majority minority neighborhoods and was twice as likely to lend to white mortgage applicants than to black mortgage applicants in Detroit and Chicago, the study also shows.

"It's simply unacceptable that Bank of America—the biggest bank in the country—is failing to ensure access to banking services and fair mortgage loans for entire communities of color," William McNary, Co-Director of Citizen Action Illinois said in a statement. "If the bank with the most branches won't do the right thing for our neighborhoods, who will?"

Despite having more than double the number of bank branches of its nearest competitor nationally—with more than 5,700 bank branches, Bank of America has five times as many branches as Citibank and two times as many branches as JPMorgan Chase—Bank of America performed worst overall in locating branches in majority minority communities in the cities analyzed in the report.

"The more we look at the practices of the biggest banks, the worse things we uncover," Stephen Lerner, Assistant to the President, SEIU, said in a statement. "Here's a bank that is already using its size and market dominance to drive up fees and interest rates on working people—and now it's trying to grow even bigger. If a bank is going to be this big and this powerful it should have responsibilities to the communities in which it operates."

If Bank of America is the largest bank, why are there no branches in our communities? It makes me upset that I can't get a loan in my community, but others that live in my community can get a loan and open up businesses in my community. It's just not fair.

Respect the diversification of the city. We need Bank of America for everybody not just a select few.

Study findings indicate that in Chicago, Bank of America has 12 times more bank branches in neighborhoods with the fewest minority residents than in neighborhoods with the most minority residents. In fact, in neighborhoods with the highest number of white residents, the ratio of residents to bank branches averages only 11,204 residents per bank branch compared to 138,930 residents per branch in the neighborhoods with the highest percentage of African Americans.

Those not living in the cities pinpointed in the study—Buffalo, Chicago, Detroit, New York, Philadelphia and St. Louis—were disappointed, but not taken aback by the findings.

It is not surprising that Bank of America doesn't have [sufficient amounts of] branches in Black communities. Most banks, not just Bank of America, have most of their branches in non-black communities because they feel that there is more money to be made in those areas, that the areas are safer and that the credit scores are better. [Overall] they feel it will be more beneficial to be in non-black communities.

Bank of America is the largest bank in the United States, controlling one in five credit cards and ten percent of all bank deposits—the maximum amount permitted by the Federal Reserve. Nationally, Bank of America has recently come under fire for its record of charging consumers some of the highest fees and interest rates in the nation—the bank collected more than $22.4 billion from penalty and service fees in 2006 alone.

In Chicago, Bank of America's acquisition in September of LaSalle Bank has raised concerns among community organizations and elected leaders at the local, state, and national levels, including a loss of 10,500 jobs and more than $780 million in tax and other revenue from the area projected by the Anderson Economic Group.

Employees Who Racially Harass Should Lose More than Just Their Jobs

Closely associated with lynching in the Jim Crow south, the hangman’s noose is one of the most powerful visual symbols that can be directed against black Americans.

The noose has been in the news quite a bit in recent months. Media outlets have widely reported the noose appearing in trees on college and high school campuses throughout the country. Black students, and their parents, are troubled by this disturbing “trend”. Most think, and rightly so, that the noose is being used to incite fear in students of color; these are essentially acts of domestic terrorism. Many local authorities brush the incidents off as pranks and have failed to acknowledge that these are, in fact, even hate crimes. Now we know the noose isn’t just a tool of terror used by immature students: It has been showing up in America’s offices and factories.

According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a federal agency created to end employment discrimination in the United States, there has been an increase in the number of racial discrimination and harassment complaints filed in this country in the last few years. Racial harassment complaints have more than doubled the past 17 years; about 7,000 complaints were filed with the agency in 2007. The hangman’s noose has appeared in several of these complaints.

In the last six years, more than 30 lawsuits that involve a noose being displayed in the workplace have been filed.

Some of the suits filed are quite disturbing and can easily transport African-Americans to another era. Earlier this year, a Pennsylvania case that alleged a noose was displayed and Klan videos shown in an employee lounges was settled for $600,000. In 2006, more than $1 million was paid to a black employee who alleged white co-workers placed a noose around his neck.

It’s somewhat comforting to hear that those who have been victimized are finding justice in civil courts. However, financial reparations are not all that is needed. Those who have committed these acts need to be charged with hate crimes; loss of a job is not enough. If this type of behavior is to end, the consequences must be stiff. Companies must increase the diversity and sensitivity training it offers to employees. Clear organizational policies that denounce and punish this type of behavior must be set and enforced; any sign of racist and prejudiced behavior should beaddressed immediately. Employers must also not attempt to cover for those employees who cross the line. In more than one case filed with the EEOC, when a company settled, a spokesman would say the settlement “indicated no wrong doing." By not firmly denouncing this type of behavior, the employer gives the offender -- and would be offenders -- the idea this type of thing is okay.

Racial tensions in this country are boiling over, if communities don’t ban together to bring an end to these insensitive and criminal displays, generations of work towards racial harmony may come undone.

Report points to 'dropout factories'

Texas has 185 high schools, including 42 in the eight-county Houston area, that are hemorrhaging students fast enough to be called "dropout factories" in a new national report.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University, who conducted the study for The Associated Press, applied that label to high schools with an attrition rate of 40 percent or higher — which amounted to one in 10 high schools across America.

The report's release coincides with a Texas study by the San Antonio-based Intercultural Development Research Association showing a 34 percent statewide attrition rate for the 2006 graduating class.

"This is the time bomb. This is the tsunami that started already," said Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, D-San Antonio, a member of the Senate Education Committee.

"If you look at our demographics, we have got to solve this problem," she said of school dropouts, which she considers probably our No. 1 problem in the state of Texas.

Losing 40 percent of each high school class eventually will bring on a colossal economic crisis for Texas, Van de Putte said.

As a group, Hispanics have the highest dropout rate in Texas, some 45 percent, according to the IDRC report. Hispanics also make up the largest percentage of the state's 4.6 million public school students.

State officials said they are addressing the problem by increasing funding for dropout prevention, including $25 million a year for a new initiative lawmakers approved last spring, Texas Education Agency spokeswoman DeEtta Culbertson said.

The national report defines a dropout factory as a school where at least 40 percent of an entering freshman class does not make it to their senior year.

"It's a very difficult issue and the community seems to have a real good understanding of that," said Terry Abbott, spokesman for the Houston Independent School District, which had 22 high schools on the list. "HISD is probably one of the leaders in the country in addressing it."

While they don't think the study is solid, HISD officials acknowledge the district's dropout rate is too high. They've tried to tackle the issue by holding an annual door-to-door walk in the fall to look for students who haven't returned to school. The district also has a team of specialists who do a similar job year-round.

Abbott echoed the mobility issue, citing a ninth-grader who starts in one school and graduates in another can count as a dropout, and HISD has many transfers within the district.

"Calling them 'dropout factories' is just wrong. It's offensive to the many great men and women who give their lives to teaching children every day," he said.

Maria Cuca Robledo, director of the Intercultural Development Research Association, said the term is "accurate" and noted that about 70 percent of the 2.7 million Texas students who left school during her group's study period were Hispanic or black.

Schools plan for a 30 percent student attrition rate when hiring teachers, developing curriculum and building new schools, she said.

A list of the 42 Houston-area high schools deemed to have dangerously high dropout rates in a study by researchers at Johns Hopkins University:

• Aldine ISD: Carver• Alief ISD: Elsik, Hastings
• Angleton ISD: Angleton
• Brazosport ISD: Brazosport
• Channelview ISD: Channelview
• Cleveland ISD: Cleveland
• Columbia-Brazoria ISD: Columbia
• Dickinson ISD: Dickinson
• Goose Creek ISD: Baytown Lee
• Houston ISD: Austin, Chavez, Davis, Furr, Jones, Kashmere, Law Enforcement-Criminal Justice, Lee, Madison, Middle College for Technology Careers, Milby, Reagan, Sam Houston, Scarborough, Sharpstown, Sterling, Waltrip, Washington, Westbury, Wheatley, Worthing, Yates
• La Marque ISD: La Marque
• New Caney ISD: New Caney
• North Forest ISD: Forest Brook, Smiley
• Pasadena ISD: Pasadena, Sam Rayburn, South Houston
• Splendora ISD: Splendora
• Spring Branch ISD: Northbrook, Spring Woods

Dropout Factories

It's a nickname no principal could be proud of: "Dropout Factory," a high school where no more than 60 percent of the students who start as freshmen make it to their senior year. That description fits more than one in 10 high schools across America.

"If you're born in a neighborhood or town where the only high school is one where graduation is not the norm, how is this living in the land of equal opportunity?" asks Bob Balfanz, the Johns Hopkins researcher who coined the term "dropout factory."

There are about 1,700 regular or vocational high schools nationwide that fit that description, according to an analysis of Education Department data conducted by Johns Hopkins for The Associated Press. That's 12 percent of all such schools, about the same level as a decade ago.

While some of the missing students transferred, most dropped out, says Balfanz. The data look at senior classes for three years in a row to make sure local events like plant closures aren't to blame for the low retention rates.

The highest concentration of dropout factories is in large cities or high-poverty rural areas in the South and Southwest. Most have high proportions of minority students. These schools are tougher to turn around because their students face challenges well beyond the academic ones -- the need to work as well as go to school, for example, or a need for social services.

Utah, which has low poverty rates and fewer minorities than most states, is the only state without a dropout factory. Florida and South Carolina have the highest percentages.

"Part of the problem we've had here is, we live in a state that culturally and traditionally has not valued a high school education," said Jim Foster, a spokesman for the South Carolina department of education. He noted that residents in that state previously could get good jobs in textile mills without a high school degree, but that those jobs are gone today.

Washington hasn't focused much attention on the problem. The No Child Left Behind Act, for example, pays much more attention to educating younger students. But that appears to be changing.

House and Senate proposals to renew the five-year-old No Child law would give high schools more federal money and put more pressure on them to improve on graduation performance, and the Bush administration supports that idea.

The current NCLB law imposes serious consequences on schools that report low scores on math and reading tests, and this fallout can include replacement of teachers or principals -- or both. But the law doesn't have the same kind of enforcement teeth when it comes to graduation rates.

Nationally, about 70 percent of U.S. students graduate on time with a regular diploma. For Hispanic and black students, the proportion drops to about half.

The legislative proposals circulating in Congress would:

Make sure schools report their graduation rates by racial, ethnic, and other subgroups and are judged on those results. That's to ensure that schools aren't just graduating white students in high numbers, but also are working to ensure that minority students get diplomas.

Get states to build data systems to keep track of students throughout their school years and more accurately measure graduation and dropout rates.

Ensure that states count graduation rates in a uniform way. States have used a variety of formulas, including counting the percentage of entering seniors who get a diploma. That measurement ignores the obvious fact that kids who drop out typically do so before their senior year.

Create strong progress goals for graduation rates and impose sanctions on schools that miss those benchmarks. Most states currently lack meaningful goals, according to The Education Trust, a nonprofit group that advocates for poor and minority children.

The current law requires testing in reading and math once in high school, and those tests take on added importance because of the serious consequences for a school of failure. Critics say that creates a perverse incentive for schools to encourage kids to drop out before they bring down a school's scores.

"The vast majority of educators do not want to push out kids, but the pressures to raise test scores above all else are intense," said Bethany Little, vice president for policy at the Alliance for Excellent Education, an advocacy group focused on high schools. "To know if a high school is doing its job, we need to consider test scores and graduation rates equally."

Little said some students pushed out of high schools are encouraged to enroll in programs that prepare them to take the GED exam. People who pass that test get certificates indicating they have high-school level academic skills. But the research shows that getting a GED doesn't lead to the kind of job or college success associated with a regular diploma.

Loretta Singletary, 17, enrolled in a GED program after dropping out of a Washington, D.C. high school that she describes as huge, chaotic and violent. "Girls got jumped. Boys got jumped, teachers (were) fighting and hitting students," she said.

She said teachers had low expectations for students, which led to dull classes. "They were teaching me stuff I already knew ... basic nouns, simple adjectives."

Singletary said a subject she loved was science but she wasn't offered it, and complaints to administrators went unanswered. "I was interested in experiments," she said. "I didn't have science in 9th or 10th grade."

A GED classmate of Singletary's is 23-year-old Dontike Miller, who attended and left two D.C. high schools on the dropout factory list. Miller was brought up by a single mother who used drugs, and he says teachers and counselors seemed oblivious to what was going on in his life.

He would have liked for someone to sit him down and say, "'You really need to go to class. We're going to work with you. We're going to help you'," Miller said. Instead,"I had nobody."

Teachers and administrators at Baltimore Talent Development High School, where 90 percent of kids are on track toward graduating on time, are working hard to make sure students don't have an experience like Miller's.

The school, which sits in the middle of a high-crime, impoverished neighborhood two miles west of downtown Baltimore, was founded by Balfanz and others four years ago as a laboratory for getting kids out on time with a diploma and ready for college.

Teachers, students and administrators at the school know each other well.

"I know teachers that have knocked on people's doors. They want us to succeed," 12th-grader Jasmine Coleman said during a lunchtime chat in the cafeteria.

Fellow senior Victoria Haynes says she likes the way the school organizes teachers in teams of four, with each team of teachers assigned to a group of 75 students. The teachers work across subject areas, meaning English and math teachers, for example, collaborate on lessons and discuss individual students' needs.

"They all concentrate on what's best for us together," Haynes said. "It's very family oriented. We feel really close to them."

Teachers, too, say it works.

"I know the students a lot better, because I know the teachers who teach them," said 10th-grade English teacher Jenni Williams. "Everyone's on the same page, so it's not like you're alone in your mission."

That mission can be daunting. The majority of students who enter Baltimore Talent Development in ninth grade are reading at a fifth- or sixth-grade level.

To get caught up, students have 80-minute lessons in reading and math, instead of the typical 45 minutes. They also get additional time with specialists if needed.

The fact that kids are entering high schools with such poor literacy skills raises questions about how much catch-up work high schools can be expected to do and whether more pressure should be placed on middle schools and even elementary schools, say some high-school principals.

"We're at the end of the process," says Mel Riddile, principal of T.C. Williams High School, a large public school in Alexandria, Va. "People don't walk into 9th grade and suddenly have a reading problem."

Other challenges to high schools come from outside the school system. In high-poverty districts, some students believe it's more important to work than to stay in school, or they are lured away by gang activity or other kinds of peer or family pressure.

At Baltimore Talent Development, administrators try to set mini-milestones and celebrations for students so they stay motivated. These include more fashionable uniforms with each promotion to the next grade, pins for completing special programs and pizza parties to celebrate good attendance records.

"The kids are just starved for recognition and attention. Little social rewards matter to them," said Balfanz.

Balfanz says, however, that students understand the biggest reward they can collect is the piece of paper handed to them on graduation day.

Without it, "there's not much work for you anymore," he said. "There's no way out of the cycle of poverty if you don't have a high school diploma."

Genarlow Wilson’s Release from Georgia Prison

The mother of Genarlow Wilson said she's still in shock over the Georgia Supreme Court's decision to overturn her son's conviction and order him released from prison on Friday.
"It feels pretty good, but it hasn't really sunk in yet," said Juannessa Bennett.

On Friday, the state’s highest court ruled 4-3 that Wilson’s 10-year sentence was cruel and unusual punishment.

Wilson, now 21, served 32 months of a 10-year prison sentence after he was convicted in 2005 on aggravated sexual molestation charges after having consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old girl at a party at a motel on New Year’s Eve 2004. He was 17 at the time.

Wilson and four other young men admitted to detectives that they had sexual intercourse with one teenaged girl and that another had performed oral sex on them at a party involving about a dozen youths at a Douglasville, Georgia hotel. Under Georgia law at the time, oral sex with anyone under the age of 16 could be classified as aggravated child molestation, even if it occurred between consenting teenagers fewer than three years apart in age. The offense carried a mandatory sentence upon conviction of 10 years in prison.

Sexual intercourse was, and remains, a misdemeanor under Georgia law. The code governing oral sex was amended in July 2006 to treat consensual oral sex between teenagers no more than four years apart as a misdemeanor, punishable by no more than 12 months in prison with no sex offender registry requirement.

Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears wrote in the majority opinion last week that the changes in the law “represent a seismic shift in the legislature’s view of the gravity of oral sex between two willing teenage participants.”

Further, Sears wrote, the original sentence made “no measurable contribution to acceptable goals of punishment” and that Wilson’s crime did not rise to the “level of adults who prey on children.”

The original law, under which Wilson was convicted, was intended to protect women and children from sexual predators.

District Attorney David McDade, in his filing at the time, asked the court to reject the motion to grant Wilson a new trial, arguing that the constitutional issue was not raised during the trial, that the argument for it was rejected when the high court returned the case to the state Court of Appeals, which had ruled against Wilson, and that it should not be raised again before the state Supreme Court.

Wilson, McDade and two assistant district attorneys argued in the filing, wanted to change the law after the fact.

In December 2006, the Georgia Supreme Court turned down the appeal seeking a new trial for Wilson.

Presiding Justice Carol Hunstein noted that in easing the penalties for teens, “the Legislature expressly chose not to allow the provisions of the new amendments to affect person convicted under the previous version of the statute.”

Hunstein added she was “very sympathetic” to Wilson’s plight, but that the court was bound by the limits set by the legislature.

In January, state Sen. Emmanuel Jones and four primary co-sponsors introduced a bill that would allow a court imposing a sentence on several charges, including sodomy and aggravated child molestation charges, on convictions before July 1, 2006 to “correct or reduce the sentence and to suspend or probate all or any part of the sentence imposed.” That would have allowed a judge to revere Wilson’s conviction.

The bill never made it out of committee during the legislative session.

In April, Bernstein filed a habeas action that allowed her to raise legal questions that Wilson’s original trial lawyer did not. The filing was basically a civil suit that contended that Wilson had been imprisoned improperly.

In June, Monroe Superior Court Judge Thomas Wilson (no relation to Genarlow Wilson) threw out Genarlow Wilson’s conviction and ordered him released, but a little more than an hour later, the office of Georgia Attorney General Thurbert Baker announced it would appeal, meaning Wilson would remain in prison.

After Friday’s ruling, Baker said in a statement he would not file another appeal.

“I have received and reviewed the decision by the Georgia Supreme Court in this matter, and I respectfully acknowledge the Court’s authority to grant the relief that they have crafted in this case,” Baker said. “As the Supreme Court found, the habeas court’s order resentencing Mr. Wilson, however well-meaning, was unauthorized under Georgia law. It was for this reason that I appealed, in order to insure a fair and consistent application of the law not just to Mr. Wilson, but to others similarly situated.

"I hope the Court’s decision will also put an end to this issue as a matter of contention in the hearts and minds of concerned Georgians and others across the country who have taken such a strong interest in this case,” said Baker.

About 2,000 people rallied in Atlanta in July calling for Wilson’s release. He also received support from the NAACP, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Rev. Al Sharpton and former President Jimmy Carter. The case received national attention on CNN and ABC, and Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks and CEO of HDNet, which produced a special report on the case, helped fund Wilson’s defense.

A group of citizens organized by an investment manager and philanthropist in New York had pledged $1 million for bond that could be wired on Wilson’s behalf with 24 hours notice, if a bond had been approved.

“Thank God that common sense, the will of the General Assembly and the popular opinion of most Georgians still has a place before the powers of government,” Georgia NAACP State Conference President Edward O. Dubose said Friday in a statement reacting to the court’s decision. “America's history is littered with instances when laws have been misused -- their intended purposes subverted and lives destroyed. The NAACP monitors and intervenes when necessary because, all too often, the misuses of said laws are predicated by race or results in racial disparity.”

“The Wilson case, along with Jena 6 and countless lesser known rulings, speak to a systemic flaw in our nation’s criminal justice system,” Rep. Carolyn C. Kilpatrick (D-Mich.), chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, said in a statement on Friday. "There must be a thorough assessment of both state and federal laws to ensure that the punishment parallels the crime. Overzealous prosecutors must be condemned for allowing their political aspirations to prejudice the judicial process."

Meanwhile, Wilson and his family are looking forward to getting back to a normal life, his mother and lawyer said Sunday.

Wilson’s first few days of freedom, were filled with sleeping, getting a haircut, shopping for new clothes for church, which he attended on Sunday, and “he kept peeping in the fridge,” Bernstein said with a laugh.

Bernstein said Wilson wants to focus on school and preparing for college, adding that “he’s already getting calls from different schools.”

Asked if he was bitter about the experience, Bernstein said Wilson is trying to stay focused on the future.

“He says he’s facing forward, and really what he’s paying attention to [is] if he gets caught in that [situation again], he’ll be right where he started from,” Bernstein said.

After this initial rounds of interviews to thank his supporters, Bernstein said, Wilson and his family will try to lie low for a while as they ponder his future.

“We don’t want to put too much on him. We have to be careful,” Bernstein said. “He was in prison for 32 months. It’s a fine line you’re asking him to walk. He’s actually appreciative of the help, but we want to protect him a little bit because we don’t want him to fail.”

“We’re trying to get to the household things,” mom Juannessa Bennett said, noting the media attention following her son's release has kept the family from settling back into a family routine. She hasn’t had time to run errands or go grocery shopping, she says, because “people have been in and out interviewing.”

"Probably in a week or so, it'll feel normal again,” Bennett said. “(But) it feels normal to have him back in the house."

President Bush dismissed comparisons between the federal response to Hurricane Katrina and the California wildfires

President Bush dismissed comparisons between the federal response to Hurricane Katrina and the California wildfires Thursday, saying that getting help to people who are hurting is the most important thing.

"There's all kinds of time for historians to compare this response to that response," Bush said during a tour of the state's fire-ravaged communities.

The president walked down a street of the hard hit community of Rancho Bernardo, where homes have been burned to rubble, at one point offering comfort to Jay and Kendra Jeffcoat, standing near where a single spiral staircase rested amid rubble that used to be their home and near their burnt-out car melted into the scorched earth.

"For those of us here in government, our hearts are right here with the Jeffcoats," the president said, his armed draped around Mrs. Jeffcoat. Holding her small brown dog on a leash, she fought back tears.

Bush ferried several California lawmakers with him on Air Force One and was greeted on the tarmac at Marine Corps Air Station-Miramar here by his tour guide for the day, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger — and the smell of smoke.

On the White House's South Lawn before the long flight, the president said he aimed to bring to weary Southern Californians the assurance of federal help, support for those who've lost home and businesses and thanks to weary firefighters.

He took at the start of a four-hour tour in a helicopter to get an aerial tour of the devastation. Masks and small, wet towels were distributed to the presidential entourage to help cope with the smoky conditions. A white film covered the sky and, as the choppers drew closer to San Diego, Bush saw homes that had been reduced to piles of sticks.

Bush then got a look at the situation on the ground.

In Rancho Bernardo, Bush strolled among Mediterranean-style homes, where houses that remained unscathed were interspersed with what amounted to mere shells of the American dream.

Stepping through rubble, he talked with the Jeffcoats about belongings they hoped to salvage. He shook hands at a makeshift disaster assistance center where government agencies and private companies are providing help to residents.

From there, the president's motorcade passed charred hillsides on the way north to Escondido, where he was to assess that area's damage, talk about recovery efforts and have lunch with emergency responders.

Amid all this pain were lingering memories of Washington's slow response to Katrina over two years ago, and how it damaged Bush's standing.

As the first natural disaster to begin to approach the scale of the Gulf Coast storm, the fires represented a tough test for the administration. Katrina, however, affected a far larger geographic area, knocked out all communications and nearly all key infrastructure, and impacted a relatively poorer population and much less-prepared states.

With the White House determined to convey a picture of a speedy and effective performance this time around, Bush was asked to compare the two.

"You better ask the governor how we're doing," he said, with Swarzenegger next to him on a cul de sac. "I will tell you this: In all of these responses, the thing that has amazed me most is the courage of the first responders."

Schwarzenegger said Bush called him even before he could reach out to the president for help. "I call this quick action — quicker than I expected, I can tell you that," the governor said.

Fran Townsend, Bush's White House-based homeland security adviser, said the disaster response is unfolding "exactly the way it should be" and is "better and faster" that the administration's performance after Katrina.

"This is not the end of federal assistance. It's just the beginning," she said.
Bush declared the fires a major disaster on Wednesday, setting in motion long-term federal recovery program.

The fires have destroyed about 2,200 structures since Sunday and led to the largest evacuation in California history. The flames have burned at least 431,000 acres across five counties, from Ventura in the north all the way into Mexico. Property damage has reached at least $1 billion in San Diego County alone.

A break in this week's high, hot winds, and a helpful change in their direction, had officials hoping they could make progress Thursday against the still-threatening fires.

We Don’t Have to Simply Be Saddened About Congo’s Widespread Rapes – We Can Do Something

The New York Times recently wrote about how in the Democratic Republic of Congo, rape is as much of a national pastime there as baseball is here. The difference being that instead of using a ball or bat as the medium for their recreational release, soldiers and militias there use women and girls instead.

And their sport isn’t filling ballparks. It’s filling hospitals and graveyards.

According to the United Nations, around 27,000 women and girls, and even men and boys, are believed to have been raped in eastern Congo during the past nine years -- a time in which 4 million people were killed during a war topped off by instability and ethnic violence. Right now, United Nations officials say, sexual violence in Congo is the worse in the world.
Tales of that violence sent hot waves of anger washing over me.

There’s the story of five-year-old Uzele who, as documented by Amnesty International, was tending a fire outside her home in March 2004 when she was raped by a combatant of one of the rebel militias that existed then.

There’s the story of 72-year-old Stephanie, who was abducted by a rebel group in 2003 and held for three months.

“Every day, I was raped by up to three men,” she told Amnesty International. “When we tried to refuse, they would beat us. They also pushed wooden sticks into my vagina. Now I have a prolapsed uterus. They treated us all in the same way, whatever our age … ”

And there are pictures of rows and rows of women in Panzi Hospital, where 10 women and girls show up each day with horrific physical and psychological damage from the rapes. There are the hollow eyes of the girls who are too young to understand what happened to them, much less digest the notion that they will never be able to have children; the women bleeding from rusty nails, stones and bayonets that were plunged into their vaginas as if they were pockets on a pool table.

There are the women who now have to wear a colostomy bag as an accessory.

As I said, it angers me. It angers me that men, men who I assume were born of human women and not demons, could look at a woman, a child even, and inflict that degree of brutality.
It angers me that there are places on this earth where women can be treated that way and have no place to turn for justice. In Congo, the judicial infrastructure is so unstable that rapists are rarely brought to trial. And because even the Congolese government troops also participate in the rapes, there is no assurance that the ones meting out the punishment won’t be more sympathetic to the ones meting out the abuse.

That situation doesn’t sound like one that will lead to justice as much as it sounds like one that will lead to more piling-on.

As I said earlier, reading about the plight of Congo women sent me into a "Thelma and Louise" moment. It made me think about what would happen if the girls and women there were unshackled by the passivity that their culture commands -- a passivity which now has made them more susceptible to become victims than to be prized as valuables -- could find themselves some AK-47s and shoot whoever decides to use their bodies as a medium for a perverted pastime.

Of course I know that would be unrealistic. Yet there is a lot that we can do to help alleviate the suffering of our sisters in Congo.

For starters, we can vow to be angry, rather than depressed, about the problem. We can call our representatives in Congress, especially our black representatives, and urge them push for solutions -- the first of which should be the isolation of Congo.

Until it does something to end the mass rapes, which a colleague of mine calls “gendercide,” that government should be treated like a pariah state.

We can, through our sororities and fraternities and service organizations, as well as our historically black colleges and universities, develop awareness campaigns.

And we can donate money to humanitarian organizations like Doctors Without Borders, the Nobel prize-winning organization that provides emergency medical care to Congo and other struggling areas of the world. We can also donate money to human rights organizations working in Congo and organizations that support the efforts of women like Marie Pacuriema, a Congo woman who runs an operation that not only helps rape victims rebuild their lives, but empowers them to stand up for themselves as well.

In other words, Pacuriema, who was featured in a Christian Science Monitor article, is showing them that in spite of what’s happened to them, they don’t have to feel helpless.

And neither should we.