Florida A & M University is providing an outstanding opportunity for Black women entering college in the fall of 2009. It is designed to address their absence in the field of computer technology. Dr. Jason Black is the Principal Investigator of a recently awarded $552,000 NSF Grant entitled African-American Women in Computer Science. The grant provides scholarships from $4000 to $10,000 per year for female African American students.

DEADLINE FOR APPLYING:
• If planning for Fall Enrollment: August 1 of that year
• If planning for Spring Enrollment: December 1 of the previous year

For more info visit: www.cis.famu.edu

By Juleyka Lantigua
The more I hear, read, and witness the reaction of many (mostly conservative) white people to the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, the worse I feel for white people in general.

You know the feeling. That nagging sense of collective embarrassment (C.E.) some of us brown/black folks feel whenever “one of us” does something so outrageously unimaginable that we shrug our shoulders and brace for impact.

Examples:
    A Latino mayor of huge city admitting to cheating on his wife.
    A certain Black civil rights icon threatening to castrate a presidential candidate.
    A Black star athlete shooting himself in a club after strapping his gun to his sweatpants.
    A first Latino governor who can’t get confirmed for Cabinet because he’s so corrupt.

I don’t know for sure if white people ever get a serious outbreak of C.E., but I bet plenty of them are feeling a little rash-y right about now. The likes of Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, Bill O'Reilly and their ilk have spent the last week chomping at Judge Sotomayor, and trying to best each other for bottom-feeder status.

Among their most ignorant claims:
    She’s an immigrant fluent in “illegal speak.”
    She’s a racist who thinks she’s better than a white man.
    Her menstrual cycles will impact court rulings.
    She does not know the real America.

I’m not accusing all white people of sharing these incendiary views, not by far. But what I am aware of is that the rest of us non-whites are watching and listening carefully, because deep down in places we don’t talk about, we live with the fear that to some extent many more white folks see us in such radically warped ways as to render some of these statements .0000000001% true in their worldviews.

And that’s why I feel bad for white people right now. I feel bad for them because an almost measurable degree of doubt has been introduced to their relationships with the rest of us, because they have all become somewhat suspect in our eyes—just a tiny bit—because the most vociferous and dangerously ignorant among them have unleashed the type of venom that clouds the air for years.

I hope I’m wrong about this, and that this is merely a fleeting manifestation of some deep-set paranoia the immigrant, Bronx-bred, educated Latina in me harbors in a forgotten crevice in her mind.

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Juleyka Lantigua is a writer whose work has appeared in books, magazines and newspapers around the world.

George  Washington University Science & Engineering Apprenticeship program -  This program places academically talented H.S. students (at least 16 yrs old, sophomores/ juniors) with interest in science & math in Dept. of Defense laboratories for an 8-wk period over the summer.  This is an invaluable experience in the world of scientific research, with hands-on exposure to scientific & engineering practices not available in the HS environment.  It is a paid apprenticeship ($2,000) and the students are assigned a scientist or engineer as their mentor. Students must submit their transcript (minimum GPA 3.0) and teacher recommendation to the program director for consideration and daily transportation is the student's responsibility.  Program runs from June 22 - August 14, 2009.  To apply or get more information about the program, e-mail Swati.Ramadorai@US.ARMY.MIL, call Swati Ramadorai at (301)-319-9259 or visit: www.usaeop.com

Exploring Engineering at the University of Maryland (E2@UMD) is a one-week summer program for high school women (rising juniors or seniors) who are considering engineering as a possible major and career. You will live on campus for one-week and explore the world of engineering through fun hands-on activities, laboratory experiments, informative workshops, team challenges, and seminars with professional engineers. July 12-18, or July 19-25; rising juniors and seniors.  For more info visit: www.wie.umd.edu

University of Maryland Young Scholars Program targets rising juniors and seniors who have a strong academic record and a desire to excel to experience college life while earning three academic credits.  14
courses are offered for three weeks from July12 - 31, 2009. For more info visit: www.summer.umd.edu

City Year, Washington DC (AmeriCorps) - Graduating seniors who are not sure what they want to do after high school should consider applying for a paid community service position with City Year, Washington, DC., a group of 17-24 year olds committed to full-time service for ten months in the Washington, DC community.  Benefits include living stipend ($200 per week), health care coverage, free metro pass, and $4,725 educational scholarship.  For more info or to apply visit: www.cityyear.org or call Amanda Seligman at: 202-776-7780.  Recruitment open houses will be held once a month at their headquarters:  918 U Street, NW , 2nd floor, Washington, DC 20001

By Juleyka Lantigua

Since AmeriCorps was founded by President Clinton in 1993, 540,000 members have served with thousands of nonprofit organizations, public agencies and faith-based organizations nationwide. Among many other things, members tutor and mentor youth, build affordable housing, clean parks and streams, and recruit, train and manage community volunteers, and coordinate after-school programs.

In exchange, volunteers receive a very modest monetary award they can use towards college or qualified student loans. During their term of service, volunteers are also provided training, student loan deferment, health care, and in about half the cases, a modest annual living allowance.

The bill that President Obama just signed contains a few important changes: it increases volunteers to 250,000 from 75,000 annually, and bumps the education allowance to match the amount given by a Pell education grant ($5,350). The areas of service will also be expanded to include education, veterans’ affairs, health care, and renewable energy.

More needs to be done, though.

According to AmeriCorps, 46 percent of members embark on careers in education, social work, public safety, government and military service. A way to modernize the volunteer organization is to create strong mentorship opportunities for volunteers to interact with high-level managers, executives and elected officials who can help them envision and shape careers in those fields.

But to fully mature AmeriCorps we need to create tangible career tracks that lead to lasting professions in service, civic entrepreneurship, and elected office. President Obama is a perfect example of how community-level experience can form a solid foundation for a life in service and leadership.

We should provide the same opportunity to others.

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Juleyka Lantigua is a writer whose work has appeared in books, magazines and newspapers around the world.

NYPD's Finest at their finest...it will be interesting to see how the City's PR guru's will try to spin this story.

For the full story visit: www.nytimes.com

By Juleyka Lantigua

As any friend of mine will tell you, I am a huge supporter/lover/believer/consumer of all things Japanese. From their curiously exotic snack food (think shrimp-flavored chips) to their mind-bending fashion trends (hey, Gwen Stefani, I chatted up some Harajuku girls waaaay before you put them in your video) to their admirable sense of honor and loyalty to family. I was lucky enough to have lived in the Land of the Rising Sun some years ago, and have returned several times since my soul sister is a hip Tokyoite.

So imagine my unfettered delight upon learning that in the heart of Quisqueya Heights (the Dominican epicenter in the U.S.) an enterprising and visionary tenth-grade teacher named Keiko Takenaka is teaching boys and girls to speak Japanese.

At New Heights Academy, a charter school on Amsterdam Avenue and 150th Street, Japanese is the only foreign language offered to students whose classes are conducted in a tailored combination of English and Spanish, depending on their language strengths.

Besides fundamentals in math, science, English and social studies, all 10th and 11th graders are required to complete the Japanese language program. ‘‘Being bilingual or trilingual is an extraordinarily marketable skill, and it is important to us that we equip our high school graduates with many competitive advantages to help them succeed in college and the work environment,’’ Stacy Winitt, the school’s founder and executive director, told a Japanese newspaper recently. 



Many of us will no doubt agree with that sentiment, while scratching our heads as to why pick Japanese….

The answer: phonetics!

Much like Spanish, which is one of the native tongues spoken by many of the Academy’s students who are 82% Latino, spoken Japanese is entirely phonetic: what you see is what you get. You pronounce words almost exactly as they are written.

Arigato. (Thank you.)
Watashi wa America-jin. (I am American)
Ja ne. (See you later.)

In choosing Japanese, Winitt-san and her staff also considered the insular nature of Washington Heights, which is predominantly Latino in culture.
‘‘Not only did I want my students to learn a new language, but I wanted the opportunity to expose them to a new culture as well,’’ she said.



The similarities between Japanese and Spanish sounds and vowels have been a big encouragement to the students. “They can speak better. Their pronunciation is way better than other English-as-a-first-language students,’’ Takenaka-san said.

What’s more, in October 2008, the United States-Japan Foundation awarded New Heights a grant of $15,000 to build a Japanese resource library, filled with literature, new textbooks, software, and visual aids.

Yokudekimasheta!!

Well done and hooray!!

And domo arigato Takenaka-san and Winitt-san!

Juleyka Lantigua is a writer whose work has appeared in books, magazines and newspapers around the country.

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By Juleyka Lantigua

Inspired by the current Facebook craze that compels people to tell everyone stuff no one really needs (or wants) to know, I decided to put together 25 random things you may want to know.

1.    While Latinos make up 13.5% of the U.S. population, they account for only 7% of the bachelor’s degrees. Only one in four college-age Latinos is actually in college.
2.    The estimated circulation of newspapers targeting Latinos is 16M.
3.    Latinos have a combined buying power of over $452B.
4.    JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, SunTrust, HSBC and Citizens Bank all have indicated they will stop issuing student loans to students who attend community colleges.
5.    About 6.2M students attend community colleges, adding up to 40% of all undergraduates.
6.    Latinos make up 13.5% of the U.S. population but 19% of new HIV infections each year.
7.    An estimated 28% of Latino students drop out of high school, compared to 7% of white students and 13% of Black students.
8.    Nearly 50M adults (ages 20-74)—or 27% of the adult population—are obese.
9.    Overall, more than 108M adults, or 61% of the adult population are either obese or overweight.
10.  Ethnic minorities are 50% more likely than whites to live in communities with hazardous waste facilities.
11.  Close to 90 municipalities in 27 states have drafted—and a handful have enacted into law—ordinances that prohibit landlords from renting to undocumented immigrants.
12.  Among them are: Farmers Branch, Texas, Palm Bay, Fla., Valley Park, Mo., Riverside, N.J., and Hazleton, Pa.
13.  13.9M people (including 4.7M children) belong to families in which the head of the household is an undocumented immigrant.
14.   There are more than 1.5M adopted children in the United States, accounting for 2% of all U.S. children.
15.   An adoption law in Florida requires that, before putting a child up for adoption, a pregnant woman publish in a newspaper the names of partners, their physical descriptions, and locations where conception may have taken place if she does not know the father’s identity.
16.   Florida, which ranks fourth nationwide in adoptions, is the only state with such a law.
17.   In Florida, a woman does not need to consult the biological father to get an abortion.
18.   By law, more than 100 New York City agencies must offer assistance, documentation, interpretation and publications in six foreign languages: Spanish, Russian, Italian, French Creole, Korean and Chinese.
19.   170 languages are spoken in New York City.
20.   In L.A. County, at least 224 languages have been identified, with publications being produced in about 180 of them.
21.   Miami is probably the most truly bilingual city in the entire U.S., with 58.5% of the county’s 2.4M residents speaking Spanish.
22.   31 percent of American adults—63M people—know someone who has used a dating website.
23.   About 15% of—30M—know someone who has been in a long-term relationship or married someone he or she met online.
24.   58 percent of Latino consumers own a desktop computer.
25.   More than 16M Latinos are online.

Juleyka Lantigua is a writer whose work has appeared in books, magazines and newspapers around the country.

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Note: All pop-up content embedded into articles are selected by our site editors and not individual contributors. They are purely for informational and contextual purposes and do not constitute an endorsement by individual contributors to the República Update.

Matt Taibbi has a very interesting take on the economic crisis in the current issue of Rolling Stone magazine entitled “The Big Takeover where he goes on to say  that the global economic crisis isn't about money - it's about power and how Wall Street insiders are using the bailout to stage a revolution."

The article's opening line "It's over — we're officially, royally fucked," hooked us right in.

Thanks to Christophe for the lead.

More after the [ JUMP ]

By Juleyka Lantigua
An environmental spark has been ignited in the South Bronx, a place usually associated with crime, poverty and all types of social ills. The point source for the flame is a statuesque and brilliant Black woman named Majora Carter, who is gaining national and international acclaim for her work in a forgotten corner of the world's most celebrated city.Majora Carter, 41, grew up watching buildings burn because of what she calls "the financial disinvestment" in her Hunts Point neighborhood in The Bronx. After graduating from Wesleyan, she returned home and became involved with local youth and arts groups, which led to community development and public arts projects.

She soon learned that New York City and New York State were planning to build a large waste facility on the area's waterfront to process 40 percent of the City's garbage. She started to make connections between the actions of the city and state governments and the ailing state of her community. "They were absolutely complicit in bringing on not just the economic disinvestment but also what it brought in: the environmental degradation of our community. They put it on poor communities of color, thinking they're not going complain too much."

Sustainable South Bronx (SSBX.org), the organization she helmed for seven years, started with the idea of building a South Bronx Greenway to include bicycle and pedestrian paths, open spaces, and waterfront access. When the restoration process began, the contractors would bring people in the work, even though the community had a 25 percent unemployment rate. So Carter started asking why they were not training locals to do the work.

Soon they were training people to work on reclaiming and rehabilitating the waterfront, wetland restoration, cleaning up contaminated land, and green-roof installation. "We effectively coupled poverty alleviation with environmental remediation so that we could work to make sure that people felt that they had the capacity to change the world and change their own lives at the same time," she explains proudly.

A tenet of the work SSBX does is the idea that environmental rights are civil rights. "It is the core of everything we do. Environmental justice means [certain] communities shouldn't have to have lots of environmental burdens and not enjoy environmental benefits," Carter says. She is unequivocal on this point. "Race and class are the ultimate indicators of where you're going to find the good stuff—like parks and trees—and where you're going to find the bad stuff—like waste facilities and power plants. And of course [there are] health effects associated with it."

In 2005, Carter was honored with a MacArthur "genius award" Fellowship in recognition of her work as "a relentless and charismatic urban strategist" as the foundation described her. But Carter, who has served on the Clinton Global Initiative Poverty Alleviation Panel, has always been very clear that the advocacy she practices is not about receiving charity.

"For us, it's about resource generation; it's about recognizing that there are assets here to produce even more resources. And that people are your ultimate resource…We're not expecting people to do this out of the kindness of their hearts…There will be many opportunities for people to participate in this," Carter says.

After years of focusing on improving the environment in her own backyard, Carter re-aligned the work of SSBX to parallel the growing economic needs of the area as well as the expanding demands of the burgeoning green economy. The aim is to develop an eco-industrial sector, a collection of businesses that use recycled materials as raw materials and has the potential to generate hundreds of local jobs. "I want to help make the South Bronx the center for green manufacturing in New York City," she asserts.

The Bronx is just the beginning. Carter is now transitioning out of her role as the head of SSBX to start her own organization, the Majora Carter Group. "My job will be to go around the country, and internationally, to help support other municipalities, business leaders, universities and community members so they can work together to unlock their green-collar potential." So far, she has received interest from Baltimore, Kansas City, Missouri, Miami, Milwaukee, and Detroit.

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Juleyka Lantigua is a writer whose work has appeared in books, magazines and newspapers around the country.

Note: All pop-up content embedded into articles are selected by our site editors and not individual contributors. They are purely for informational and contextual purposes and do not constitute an endorsement by individual contributors to the Republica Update.

By Juleyka Lantigua

“Give us your ideas, and we’ll give them to the president.”

That deceptively simple invitation lured me into the multi-layered change.gov website a few weeks ago—during a sleepless night, mind you. In case you don’t know, change.gov was set up by the Obama-Biden transition team as the preferred communication tool between the powers that be and the rest of us. There are many useful and many not-so-useful things on the site. (I’ll let you invest/waste your own time figuring out which is which.)

As I was saying, one recent winter night insomnia was tap dancing on my eyelids, so I logged on to see what people were saying. The set up was that you could vote for or against each post in order to move it up or down in the ranking, resulting in the best ideas getting the most votes and floating to the top, while the really bad ones sank to the bottom.

Allow me to summarize the more popular entries from the night I logged on:

--Withdrawing our troops from Iraq
--Free universal healthcare for everyone
--Ending our dependence on foreign oil
--Increasing our sources of sustainable energy

And so on. You get the picture; these are all BIG ideas that definitely need to be tackled, but that will take a loooooong time. So, in the interest of practicality, I decided to add some of my own ideas to the mix, just to see which would float and which would sink.

--Requiring that all public college/university graduates speak one foreign language fluently (starting with Spanish, Arabic, Chinese and Russian) in order to graduate
--Granting permanent resident status to any undocumented immigrant (w/o a criminal record) who has been in the country for 5+ years (and their kids and spouses)
--Forgiving 50% of all subsidized student loans for people who graduated in the last 10 years, so they can pump that money back into the economy
--Adding a community service requirement in order to graduate public high schools
--Establishing a guaranteed 2% interest rate for all first-time homebuyers with good credit who can put 10-20% down
--Cutting the payroll tax in half, so employers and employees get a cash infusion immediately
--Removing all vending machines from public schools

Needless to say, soon after I thrust my ideas into the public arena (much like a gladiator facing a packed Roman coliseum) I started to fret as people began to weigh in and rank them. Soon, I started to get very, very sleepy……

Juleyka Lantigua is a writer whose work has appeared in books, magazines and newspapers around the country.