Victoria Horsford

 THE 2012 ELECTION SEASON

According to my perception, President Barack Obama won both  the second and third TV presidential debates.   Election  Day is  November 6, 12 days from the newspaper issue date. The close popular vote polls figures are beyond my ken.  If Americans duplicate their Reagan election behavior, then will again demonstrate that they have no interest in their  own best interest by voting for someone who has no concern about the 98%, only the affluent.   Please make a donation to the Obama  campaign immediately.  Next week, I will digress from mainstream  media and present some other projections about election day outcomes.

SCHOOL DAYS

NYC:     Medgar Evers,  is a City University  of  New York (CUNY) campus, which caters to a large Black population  has insurmountable problems.  Recently, a Black newspaper published a Medgar Evers ad with  pictures and bios of about 20 newly- hired faculty members, all PhDs, who were hired by  besieged President William Pollard. Then,  I read a blog about  rising administration/students/faculty  tensions at Medgar Evers . Blog quotes a Medgar Evers Coalition story about  the Chancellor and the CUNY Board of Trustee decision to relocated President Pollard to Hunter College’s School of Social Work, effective September, 2012, which  is untrue.   

The 10/18 issue of a highly- regarded,  Black owned,  Brooklyn-based newspaper,  Our Town Press,  reports about  the multiplicity of Medgar Evers  problems , not the least of which is a large deficit and tuition  shortfalls, the result of administration  office errors, which will force  many  students to drop out of  2012 fall semester classes.   Irate  Medgar  Evers  students have organized   campus demonstrations to protest  the convoluted tuition  bookkeeping  mess.   The NYC City Council  has weighed in  this tuition/fall semester dropout  problem,  saying if the Administration was at fault, then it has to absorb the cost  associated with its errors. This story will be continued.   

CHICAGO: One of the early casualties of the recent  Chicago teachers strike, which crippled its public school system, is  School Superintendent Jean Claude Brizard, who was hired by Rahm Emanuel.  Brizard will be replaced by veteran New York educator/administrator  Barbara Byrd-Bennett who left NYC to  head  the Cleveland School system. 

 NYS:  De’Shawn Wright was named NYS Secretary of Education by Governor Andrew Cuomo.  Mr Wright, who has a masters degree from NYU in  Public Administration was deputy Mayor of Education  in Washington, DC and has worked in the Newark and NYC Education systems. 

INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

Twin island Caribbean  nation, a member of the British commonwealth celebrates it Independence on November 1… Panama, the southernmost nation in Central America, celebrates its 191st  independence anniversary from Spain  on 11/28.   With support from the USA, Panama  declared its  independence from Colombia, South America,  on November 3, 1903. …..In  Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez was recently elected to a fourth  term.

 MEDIA NOTES

Brown University  professor and Nigerian author/scholar Chinua Achebe , arguably Nigerian’s most international  literary supernova, who authored  the  fictional trilogy A MAN OF THE PEOPLE, NO LONGER AT EASE, THINGS FALL APART., has penned  his memoir  THERE WAS A COUNTY: A Personal History of Biafra,”  a Penguin Book.   Penguin says book is long- awaited memoir about coming of age with a fragile new nation, then watching it torn asunder in a tragic civil war, aka the Biafran War, 1967/1970.   

The 10/15 Crain’s NY Business Magazine’s cover story,  25 YEARS OF 40 Under Forty, the reunion issue, pictorials with then and now bios, is a must read.  It begins with the “  Class of 1988”  NYC movers and shakers.  The following list some of the African Americans who made  Crains  40 Under 40 List: Kenneth Chenault, American Express; Andre Harrell, Uptown Entertainment now CEO Harrell Records; John Utendahl, Utendahl Capital, now Vice Chair, Deutsche Bank America; Christopher Williams, the Williams Capital Group; Leonard Walker Jr, Chase Manhattan, now  SVP Wells Fargo; Damon John, FUBU founder, today bankrolls entrepreneurs;  Attorney L. Londell McMillan, now  NorthStar Group publisher; and Willie Woods, Jr ICV  Capital Partners, now  ICV Managing Director/President.

 TIME OUT

The National Urban League Guild celebrates its 70^th Anniversary with the VanguardAward  Luncheon which will be held on 11/27 at  the Alhambra  Ballrooom, located at 2116 Seventh Avenue. Harlem.  The 2012 Community Service Honorees  include the Greater NY Chapter Links, Inc.; The NY Coalition of  One Hundred Black Women, the NY  Club of the National Association of Negro Business and Professional Women’s Clubs, Inc.; and the Staten Island Alumnae Chapter of  Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. Tickets are $90.   For info  call 212.558.5469.

A management consultant, Victoria Horsford is a NY based journalist and cultural historian who is reachable at victoriahorsford@yahoo.com