Joe passed away on April 25, 2013.  He died peacefully in his sleep a day after undergoing surgery to remove a tumor.  He was 72 years old.  Joe grew up outside Detroit, MI.  He graduated from Howard University in Washington, D.C. with a BA.  He was the son of Joseph and Margaret Gross.  Both of his parents were teachers and later his father became an executive with the Boy Scouts of America.  His maternal grandmother began teaching in Chicago in 1917, and became the second African-American to be named a principal in the Chicago Unified School District.

Joe was committed to the Civil Rights movement in the 1960’s and in 1963 he worked on voter registration drives with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in McComb County, Mississippi.  In 1970 he traveled to Tanzania where he worked for two years.  He moved to Berkeley, CA in 1978 where he continued to be involved in civil rights issues.  He joined Berkeley Citizens’ Action, served as its coordinator, and helped re-elect Gus Newport as Mayor of Berkeley.  He was also on the executive board of the Oakland Berkeley Chapter of Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition.

In 1986, he was elected to the Berkeley School Board.  During that time he worked in the food industry, as the managing director of the Berkeley Distribution Cooperative, and later for a non-profit in San Francisco that addressed the needs of youth.   In 1987 he became executive director of Neighborhood House of North Richmond, where he served for over 3 years, and then he was the founding coordinator of EDGE: The Alliance of Ethnic and Environmental Organizations.

In 1993, Joe formed a partnership with James Nixon and the two of them started Sustainable Systems, Inc., a company specializing in building regional initiatives to accomplish sustainable economic development.   In 1996, Sustainable Systems joined with the City of Oakland to launch the Communications Technology Cluster, a business incubator for communications related businesses.  In 1999, Sustainable Systems became the lead consultant to the Bay Area Council for the Bay Area Family of Funds, helping to build four investment funds, with over $240 million in capital, to invest in low and moderate income neighborhoods in the Bay Area.

Joe’s work took him to Asia, Palestine, Ghana, South Africa, and throughout the US.  He played a major role in helping to develop an investment fund in Shreveport LA and to develop a major mixed-use, mixed-income real estate development there.  He served as treasurer of the Oakland-based Alliance for Community Development and a board member of the Center for Neighborhood Technology located in Chicago, IL.

In 2006 he became a founding board member of the California Emerging Technology Fund, working to bridge the digital divide in California.  He collaborated in launching Get Connected! Oakland. In 2012, Sustainable Systems became the lead consultant to the East Bay Broadband Consortium. At the time of his death, he was centrally involved in launching Get Connected! East Bay.

Joe was an athlete his whole life.  As a young man, he was a swimmer and a champion wrestler.  As an adult, he was an advanced martial artist.  As he got older, he became an avid hiker. For many years he hiked in Tilden Park.  He loved having Tilden Park in the neighborhood.  He used to start his hikes at the crack of dawn.  One of his other favorite places to hike was Desolation Wilderness in the Lake Tahoe area where he and his wife vacationed every year.  He said that his love of the outdoors was developed early in life through the Boy Scouts.

He was well known for his barbequing skills.  (Always mesquite, never charcoal.)

He was into his fifth year of studying with a Sacred Contract spiritual study group, which brought him a great deal of satisfaction and spiritual growth and helped him form life-long friendships with members of the group.

He met his wife of 22 years, Erlinda Castro, when they were both volunteers with the Rainbow Coalition.   Together they went to Mexico City in 1999 and Oaxaca in 2003, where he loved climbing Aztec ruins.  They had a morning ritual that they stuck to religiously where Joe would insist on making French press coffee and they would visit with each other before beginning their respective day’s work.  They were as politically compatible as two people could be.   Because of Joe’s illness their social life changed; however, movie matinees were still something they could do.  It is fitting that the last movie they saw on April 21, 2013, was “The Company You Keep.”

In December 2011 Joe was diagnosed with an incurable, untreatable disease, which impacted his heart and kidneys and compromised his strength and stamina.  It was necessary for him to go on dialysis three times a week.

Nonetheless, he still went to Tilden to hike 4 to 6 times a week, and with his trusty walking pole he would walk between 1.5 to 2.5 hours each time.  He was ecstatic the first time he was able to hike the perimeter of Lake Anza.   It brought him enormous joy to still be able to hike in spite of his illness.  After talking about it for several years, in November, 2012, Joe requested that he and Erlinda go to Yosemite.  It was his first time.

In spite of his illness, Joe returned to work part-time earlier this year, which brought him great happiness.

In addition to Erlinda, Joe is survived by his daughter, Janel Gross, his son and daughter in law, Jawanza and Francoise Gross,  his daughter and son in law, Tamu and Maniang Seck and his step daughter and son in  law, Maria Dolores and Jose Menjivar.  He is also survived by his grandchildren, Jason Wright,  Jasmine, Justine and Joseph III Gross, Madeline and Fatouja Seck, and Maricella Menjivar.

He fought for life from the very beginning of his illness.  He never gave up and firmly believed he would be around a few more years.  He was an inspiration to those who saw him fight the good fight every day.  Plans are being arranged to install a bench in his memory in his beloved Tilden Park, hopefully along one of his favorite trails.

Anyone interested may make a donation toward the memorial bench.

A consistent theme has emerged from the federal Healthy Start program since its founding in 1991: Infant mortality is not tackled during the 9 months of a woman’s pregnancy alone.

“If we really want to improve pregnancy outcomes and reduce infant mortality in this country, we need to start improving women’s health before pregnancy,” said Dr. Michael Lu, the program’s director.

Accordingly, Lu is listening to program managers nationwide to chart a course for the third major reboot of the program, “Healthy Start 3.0.”

Healthy Start is the federal government’s signature program focused on reducing infant mortality. Not to be confused with the state education program of the same name, it is funded at just under $105 million nationwide and was reauthorized through 2013 with solid bipartisan support.

Lu, a medical doctor and former UCLA professor who has been a leading researcher on infant mortality, says much of the discussion with Health Start programs has centered on a reduction of “allostatic load.” He and other experts believe African American women have shouldered it in disproportion to other women.

Allostatic load is essentially stress, and Lu’s work joins a body of research over many years tracing the reproductive health of women directly to such anxiety. Many women don’t need research to tell them that familial, social and economic worry can affect a pregnancy.

Lu emphasizes, with other researchers, that the burden is not only generated during child-bearing years. He says it begins when women are children themselves.

If a child grows up in a community where there are few protections and many risks, the load takes shape. If puberty is disproportionately marked by dangerous peer pressure and lack of opportunity, the load gets heavier. If pregnancy is dominated by worry over how you will give your child a safer upbringing than your own, the load can become too heavy.

Coupled with poor access to health care, it can result in fetal loss, premature birth, low birth weights, and poor health behaviors, all directly tied to high infant mortality rates, said Lu.

Lu’s bid to influence that life course starts with emphasis on the expanded medical coverage offered by health reform. He says consistent medical coverage that offers care before child-bearing years, as well as between pregnancies, is the most direct path to reducing infant deaths.

“I really think it’s going to be the game changer,” Lu said of the health law.

“Millions of women will gain access to health care when they are not pregnant, improving women’s health not only during their nine months of pregnancy, but across their entire life course.”

Further, Lu has urged establishing development zones in communities with high infant mortality rates — using business promotion, job training, financial literacy and asset development for families to build a more promising community.

Alameda County health officials have shared his enthusiasm for the approach and are already planning a framework to establish such development zones.

Cross-posted January 2, 2013 at: http://centerforhealthreporting.org/article/key-infant-health-reducing-stress-mom-pregnancy1037

After an agonizingly long fight to reduce the high death rate of African American newborns, California is beginning to make progress against a century-long racial disparity.

The state’s infant mortality rate among blacks fell 21 percent between 2008 and 2010, the last two years for which data is available, with particularly strong declines in Los Angeles and Oakland.

Although the African American death rate is still more than twice that of whites, it nevertheless has reached the lowest level on record.

But in San Francisco, home to sweeping public health programs and an affluent population, the story is different.

Health officials here are struggling to reduce a black infant mortality rate of 16.2 deaths per 1,000 births, compared with the white rate of 2.5. That sixfold disparity is one of the largest in the nation, and the largest for any county in the state.

“I can’t tell you the number of times I had to counsel couples who have lost a child, who had a child that was born with defects, who have had a premature child,” said the Rev. Yul Dorn Sr. of the Emanuel Church of God in Christ, which has served the black community for more than 70 years.

Public health officials acknowledge the racial divide in what is widely accepted as a key indicator of a community’s economic, environmental and social health.

“I’ve said since I’ve came here, ‘Gosh there’s so few (African American) births, couldn’t we just wrap our arms around every family, every African American family. … We’re talking about some hundreds of people,’” said Mary Hansell, who heads up infant health programs for the San Francisco Public Health Department.

“We are a wealthy city,” Hansell said. “I think that San Francisco can do more.”

Hard to measure

Measuring the extent of San Francisco’s problem is difficult, however, because the city’s black population is such a small part of the overall population: about 50,000 residents in a city of more than 800,000.

That creates a problem for researchers, who need large numbers of births and deaths to compute what they call the “true” infant mortality rate, a measurement of the odds that infant deaths will occur in a given area.

As a result, while the raw numbers say San Francisco’s infant mortality rate was 16.2 per 1,000 births between 2007 and 2010, researchers say that number is subject to a wide margin of error. An epidemiologist on Hansell’s staff said it could range from 11.2 to 22.7.

Nevertheless, Hansell said, the reality of San Francisco’s disparity is unquestioned. “We need to be increasing our efforts to specifically address this gap in black-white infant mortality.”

Although it does not have an in-home nursing program exclusively dedicated to the reduction of black infant mortality, as counties like Alameda do, San Francisco has initiated a program to reach at-risk moms and newborns.

Last summer, the city began the Nurse-Family Partnership, a federally funded effort for first-time mothers. Public health nurses assist their families until the children are 2.

Among its first clients is a pregnant 16-year-old girl named Shanika Jones. Her nurse, Lanitra Williams, has been on the job for four months.

“My grades have been slipping,” the girl recently told Williams at the student health center of Phillip & Sala Burton Academic High School in the Bayview neighborhood. “I still have a 3.0, thank God.”

Williams turns to a relationship-and confidence-building exercise in which the two read from a sheet designed to solicit what they most admire about each other.

“You show up,” Williams told Shanika. “Some people in your situation, they stop going. … You still want to go to college. … And those are qualities of successful people.”

Williams’ work with Shanika includes monitoring her blood sugar, scheduling prenatal appointments and helping her navigate a relationship with the baby’s young father.

High-risk patients

Shanika is at greater risk statistically, not only because she is a black female, but because her youth increases chances for a host of problems before and after pregnancy: premature birth, low birth weight and infant mortality.

Even before the Nurse-Family Partnership began, San Francisco health officials said, they had been working for years to drive down the disparity in infant mortality.

With a staff of 190 people and a budget of $24 million, the city’s maternal, child and adolescent health employees conduct 13,000 health visits a year with women who are pregnant, or who have recently given birth.

A majority of the visits are with residents of the city’s southeast neighborhoods.

According to a sample of more than 1,000 visits from September 2010 to February 2011, nearly 60 percent of clients were from that part of the city. The area is about a third African American, but also heavily Asian and Latino.

San Francisco’s frustration with its infant mortality disparity comes in the context of gains elsewhere.

In addition to California’s recent 21 percent drop in the black infant mortality rate, the national rate for blacks was down 8.1 percent nationally in 2010, according to preliminary statistics released this year.

And in Alameda County, where black infant mortality reduction efforts have been a model for more than two decades, the African American rate is one of the lowest in the state. So is the county’s white rate.

Afrocentric approach

Hansell isn’t in favor of an Alameda-like, in-home nursing program designed for the black community, saying she would prefer to expand efforts that already exist.

One San Francisco program uses an Afrocentric approach.

The department’s Black Infant Health Program, a state-funded effort, provides 10 prenatal counseling sessions, and 10 more post-birth.

The sessions at a health office in the Fillmore district highlight the accomplishments of prominent black women, in the context of health education.

At a recent session, participating mothers were reminded about the dangers of smoking. Focus group leader Yancey Cummings asked the women to visualize a balloon filled with clean water, and their baby submerged within. Then she told them to imagine cigarette smoke blown into the balloon, turning the water ashen and contaminating their child.

“They realize whatever is going into their body, their baby is getting,” said Cummings.

The lesson got the attention of Aisha Guillory, 35, a client.

“I have to give them credit,” said Guillory, who has sought to break a marijuana smoking habit but has continued to use, more recently mixing it into food.

Either way, she and her unborn child are being exposed to unsafe levels of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, said staff members at the Black Infant Health Program.

Guillory is eight months pregnant and among the most at-risk clients in San Francisco’s maternal programs. Because she is not a first-time mother — this is her fourth child — she does not qualify for the more direct intervention offered by the Nurse-Family Partnership.

Felicha Bell, a public health nurse at the Black Infant Health Program, said that is a disappointing gap in care for their clients, many of whom are on a second or third pregnancy.

“It’s a shame (most of) our clients can’t be in the Nurse-Family Partnership as well,” she said.

Stressful home lives

Guillory is from the Bayview-Hunters Point area, which, over the last 20 years, has had San Francisco’s highest infant mortality rates.

The area has some of the city’s lowest household incomes and educational levels.

She has faced a series of personal losses and stress that doctors say can also lead to birth complications and infant death.

In October, she had to vacate her apartment because of a bedbug infestation. In November, the unborn child’s father was sent back to jail for failing to make his probation appointments. At the end of that month, her 19-year-old brother was killed in a drive-by shooting.

So far, Guillory and her baby are safe. A recent ultrasound showed a healthy boy, due Feb. 5.

“This is his first baby,” she said of the father. “I’m hoping he’s going to be out by then.”

Pastor Dorn said the black infant death rate is high because the city’s African American community lacks the political power to demand a solution directly focused on their population.

The African American community in Alameda County “should, and does, carry some weight,” Dorn said, referring to successful black infant mortality reductions across the Bay.

“Let’s not be naive. What it really boils down to is who is voting. That’s who is going to be catered to,” he said. “They’ll throw money at it here in San Francisco, but they won’t monitor the results.”

Meanwhile, 16-year-old Shanika Jones continues to meet with nurse Williams. Shanika’s pregnancy has begun to show, and she recently learned from an ultrasound that her child is a boy.

“I feel like I can’t screw up,” the teen told Williams. “It’s my junior year, and I have him. I cannot let him down.”

Cross-posted January 2, 2013 at: http://centerforhealthreporting.org/article/san-francisco-struggles-match-california%E2%80%99s-gains-black-infant-mortality1036

In the roughest neighborhoods of Oakland, Sandra Tramiel carries a baby scale in her knapsack as she undertakes a profound mission: saving Alameda County’s black children from death before their first birthday.

Tramiel is a public health nurse, a foot soldier in a decades-long battle waged here and across the country to reduce the disproportionately high death rate of African-American newborns.

In Alameda County, which has the highest proportion of African Americans in the state, there is new evidence that efforts like Tramiel’s home visits are paying off.

The rate of black infant deaths is on the decline, having dropped to 8.05 per 1,000 live births between 2007 and 2010, one of the lowest rates in the state.

The statewide black infant mortality rate of 9.5 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2010, the most recent year for which data is available, is still agonizingly high, but for the first time the number is below double digits. The state saw a 21 percent drop from 2008 and 2010.

While researchers say they want to see the statewide decline sustained for several years before declaring it a trend, these gains — and other similar declines across the country — could have powerful health and social significance for the state’s African American population.

“It’s exciting around the country to see these places that have been successful. Boston has seen success. Washington, D.C., has seen success. … Alameda County has certainly been a major leader,” said Fleda Mask Jackson, a member of the Department of Health and Human Services Advisory Committee on Infant Mortality.

Still many deaths

State health officials are proud that California’s infant mortality rate now ranks fourth-best among all states in the nation.

Yet they also point out that California’s black infants continue to die more than twice as frequently as white children, whose infant mortality rate stands at 4.1 deaths per 1,000 live births.

And in a global context, California’s improved African American death rate is roughly the same as that in Sri Lanka, Botswana and a host of other developing nations.

Convinced that their work is helping to erase the long-running racial disparity, Alameda County deploys Tramiel and 14 other staff members as part of a federally funded, $2 million-a-year campaign to educate and support at-risk mothers and mothers-to-be.

Tramiel remembers her first case nearly a decade ago. A 2-month-old girl named Tatiana died of sudden infant death syndrome as she slept in her mother’s bed.

“I’d never seen a tiny coffin before. I remember how hard it was for the family to pull together,” she said while driving through Oakland on her rounds.

Tramiel was assigned to work with the grieving mother, Laurie Lawson, now 28. Among the topics they discussed: the importance of cribs. Due to some traditions and sometimes the cost, use of cribs has lagged in the African American community. Although there is some debate, SIDS has been linked to babies sleeping in parents’ beds.

Tramiel, 66, said she told Lawson about how she had lost a child six months into her pregnancy when she was in her 20s.

“It wasn’t coming from a place where I was applying book and theory to the situation,” she said.

Lingering success

The bond the two women formed continues. Lawson says she changed her sleeping habits, and now she has two healthy children: Amaya, 8, and De’jon, 5.

Recovering from the loss of Tatiana was difficult; dealing with the blame from her family only compounded her grief, Lawson said.

“I had my husband and (his) mom saying, ‘You killed my daughter, my granddaughter,’” said Lawson, whom authorities cleared of any wrongdoing. “Even to this day, sometimes I still have this fear of sleeping.”

With Tramiel’s support, Lawson stayed with her husband, Thurmond Hollins, through their daughter’s death and even as he served five years in prison for robbery.

Since his release, Hollins has found a union construction job. He credits Tramiel, marriage counselors and his incarceration to changing his perspective.

He no longer blames his wife.

“I really can’t do her like that,” said Hollins, 31. “She already has a lot of guilt, stress, hurt and blame.”

These outreach programs are only one reason infant mortality rates have dropped. In the 1930s, death rates were almost 10 times higher. Medical advances, improved prenatal care, fewer mothers who smoke, child safety seats and reductions in teen pregnancy have led to significant declines in infant deaths.

The national rate for all infants, which topped 50 deaths per 1,000 births in 1935, has fallen to 6.8. Yet gains have slowed over the last decade, and the United States’ rate has fallen to 50th in the world, one of the worst among developed countries, according to U.N. data.

Moreover, the racial disparity in the United States has been growing for much of the last century.

In the 1930s, black infant deaths were 50 to 60 percent higher than white deaths; by the end of the 20th century they had become 150 percent higher.

Experts like Mask Jackson say that infant mortality rates reflect a community’s access to health care, and its social, economic and environmental well-being.

“This is really is one of the barometers of equality,” added Mask Jackson, who is also president and CEO of Majaica, an Atlanta think tank focused on America’s uneven birth outcomes. “Each community is not going down at the same rate. There is still a disparity.”

Federal assistance

Alameda County has chipped away at the black infant mortality rate since 1991, when 17.7 deaths per 1,000 live births the previous year qualified it for the national Healthy Start program.

The Healthy Start program, established by President George H. W. Bush with 15 startup programs including Alameda’s, now encompasses 105 projects nationwide.

The programs focus on reducing barriers to health care, providing prenatal care and promoting better health behaviors. They address needs like nutrition, housing, counseling and career support.

“Certainly, we’re very hopeful,” Dr. Michael Lu, the federal administrator of Healthy Start, said of reductions in infant mortality. “But on the other hand, there’s still a lot of work to be done. There’s still more than a two-fold gap” in racial disparities.

Known as the Improving Pregnancy Outcomes Program, Alameda County’s Healthy Start effort is financed with about $2 million a year from the Department of Health and Human Services.

With a staff that includes nurses, community outreach workers, health educators and support workers, it reaches as many as 400 families a year.

“I think that where our program has been set apart from other programs of this ilk is we are very grounded in the community,” said Kiko Malin, Alameda County’s director of maternal child health programs.

“We’re listening to women, and responding to their needs,” she added. 

In-home care offered

Malin’s nurses enter homes in black neighborhoods with the highest infant mortality rates, an area that covers nine Alameda County ZIP codes.

Office visits are also part of the program.

Aminah Robinson, an Alameda County Community Health Outreach worker, meets regularly with Mori Franklin, 22, whose obesity and diabetes put her pregnancy at risk.

Like a stern sister, Robinson prodded Franklin about her diet during a recent session in San Leandro.

Franklin has a way of smiling and agreeing in a singsong voice, implying she is following the nutrition plan outlined for her. But with a few extra questions, Robinson discovered that the chicken she’s been having for dinner was covered in gravy, and the greens she’s been eating were fried.

Robinson reminded Franklin that she’s not just eating for herself. She turned to a section from “Life Unto Life,” a pamphlet health workers give to mothers so they can understand how a fetus develops, week to week. She reads from weeks 28 to 30:

“The fetus has the ability to breathe air in and out of its lungs,” Robinson read. “The brain enters a period of rapid growth … The eyes can now open, close, and blink.”

Franklin promised to work on her diet.

Baby showers

The Alameda County program identifies its mothers though referrals from other public agencies, but more often locates them through contacts with churches, hair salons and walking the sidewalks.

Three times a month, the county health department holds Club Mom baby showers for pregnant women.

The showers can draw more than 60 women on a weekend day. They are advertised with flyers and other means, but mostly through the work of “peer health leaders.” These community ambassadors make $125 a month for finding and documenting contact with 20 women.

They are expected to attend two meetings a month as well, and receive their payment in grocery store gift cards.

Many of the ambassadors have attended the showers, which often draw repeat visitors.

At the gatherings, baby games are played. Men are discussed. There’s laughter, and a few tears.

There are also sessions on new ways to track the health of your child. A recent one showed expecting mothers how to “kick count.”

The women placed their hands over their bulging bellies and were told to find a quieter setting later, then feel for 10 fetal kicks, rolls or other movement within a 2-hour period.

The American Pregnancy Association reports that kick counting is important for women with high-risk pregnancies and could prevent stillbirth.

Tramiel led a recent session. She asked the women, many of them newcomers: ”How many of you are doing kick counts?”

None raised their hands.

She took note, then followed up: ”How many of you are going to do kick counts?”

Every expecting mother raised her hand.

Cross-posted on January 2,2013 at: http://centerforhealthreporting.org/article/streets-oakland-new-hope-black-infants1038

In December, I wrote a series of articles with the San Francisco Chronicle that amounted to a tale of two counties in the fight against African American infant mortality.

African American infant mortality rates have been exponentially higher than that of the general population for decades. Traditional education efforts and increased attention to prenatal care have resulted in only incremental improvements.

But Alameda County, an aggressive, community-based approach to the problem has made promising gains in reducing the black infant death rate.

San Francisco County, with all the resources that exist in that wealthy, liberal metropolis, has one of the worst black infant mortality rates in the state.

What I didn’t have space to explore was the generational, and international, scope of infant mortality in the black community.

I must thank stakeholders like Jackie Copeland-Carson, executive director of the African Women’s Development Fund USA, for calling attention to the global scope of the problem. The philanthropic effort was established to raise American awareness of African women’s issues.

In San Francisco, I found a black infant mortality rate of 16.2 deaths per 1,000 live births, compared with a white rate of 2.5. That six-fold disparity, partially influenced by the small size of San Francisco’s black population, is the widest gap for any county in the state.

Copeland-Carson points out that African-American women have consistently had the nation’s highest rates of infant mortality, more than two times the rate of white women. And in a haunting intergenerational and international measure, the daughters of African immigrants appear to have “caught up” in a key category that leads to infant death.

Second-generation African women often have children with the same low birth weights as African American women.

Copeland-Carson further points to an Amnesty International report that shows U.S. black women die in childbirth at nearly four times the level of white women.

Her group will target the Bay Area on May 18 with a public awareness campaign to mobilize community leadership and address black infant mortality.

It will launch in the community it seeks to impact, at the Bay Area’s annual health walk and resource fair, called the Soul Stroll for Health.

“The research has consistently shown that women from the African-American and African immigrant communities have the highest infant and maternal mortality rates in the Bay Area, statewide and nationally,” said Copeland–Carson.

“We know that California has the nation’s largest African population. A targeted outreach that is inclusive of the new diversity of California’s black community is essential if we are to solve this health crisis.”

Cross-posted on May 7, 2013 at: http://centerforhealthreporting.org/blog/black-infant-mortality-international-perspective1105

Hello Maker Faire, where have you been all my life?

You are one sexy beast of a festival that celebrates art, science, technology, crafting and the DIY (do-it-yourself) maker movement. As a parent, I love you for being so damn family friendly.

What’s not to love about motorized cupcakes, battling robots, and stilt-walkers delivering dreams. You seriously kick Disneyland’s ass.

Last weekend’s Maker Faire in San Mateo drew an estimated crowd of 120,000 and over 1000 maker exhibits, with wildly innovative creations and hands-on projects to explore. Makers came in all shapes, colors and sizes, including 120 kid-run booths.

Exhibits and panel discussions from women makers, engineers and artists, were inspiring. I loved the gorgeous fire-exploding metal work of Flaming Lotus Girls, ‘Goldie Blocks’ engineering blocks for girls, HackerScouts and The Breast Stop, an interactive art installation for moms and babies.

As a co-founder of Mothership HackerMoms – the first women’s hackerspace in Berkeley – I can relate to the ‘Make or Die’ motto of Maker Faire and how fun it can be to DIT (do-it-together.) Mothership HackerMoms is a non-profit space where mothers of any gender can explore hacker/maker culture, entrepreneurship, art and design.

We share tools, knowledge, community and affordable on-site childcare. Our HackerSprout kid’s workshops (for mini makers 2-6) explore STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art and math) curriculum, as well as, music and movement.

HackerMoms combats the isolation of motherhood and the need to balance family, work and creativity. Founder Sho Sho Smith (the HackerMom wearing the pink beehive), who is no stranger to the hackerspace community (her brother founded Tokyo Hackerspace), wanted to open a haven where creative moms could flourish and support each other.

One year after opening our doors (on a shoe-string budget), we’re tickled pink to be selected by SF Bay Guardian  for their ‘Women in Business’ Award. What’s our business?

Well, I guess you could say that we help make happier mothers, and that’s good for the family, the community and the world.

This year, HackerMoms lost their Maker Faire virginity outside exhibit number seven with our Post Secret-inspired Family Secrets Tree Project. Our maker project had a cerebral and emotional vision.

Visitors were invited to anonymously share a secret, fear or desire in the form of a four by six postcard. We provided the materials, and the card became their canvas.

Secrets were deposited into a mailbox and routinely hung by laundry pins on a DIY plywood tree constructed by HackerMoms. A special thank you goes out to our artists Jen Tol and Sheila Metcalf Tobin, who made a tree design that serendipitously mirrored Maker Faire’s giant weeping willow tree in center court.

Rumor has it HackerMoms has been invited to visit a hackerspace in Rio. Now, there’s an idea I could fall in love with.

Editor’s Note: This piece reflects an individual opinion and is not a reported story from Oakland Local. Oakland Local invites community residents to share their views about events and issues in Oakland. Having said that, we LOVE this story.

“It’s never as good as it looks, it’s never as bad as it seems, but it always gets better,” was his motto, and many of the people who knew him–and all of the people who worked with him–kept this motto in their hearts as they saw David’s tireless efforts to improve the conditions of low-income people of color and marginalized communities in Oakland.

As the Executive Director of OCCUR for over 20 years, Glover led in the development of the Eastmont Technology Center  and the “A Model Built on Faith” program.  Widely recognized for his leadership, execution skills, and vision, during his lifetime Glover was honored with Community Service Awards from the Niagara Democratic Club, the National Association of Black Planners, the National Council of Negro Women, and the Bay Area Black United Fund. He also received a Profile in Excellence Award from KGO TV, a Leadership Award from Black Business Listings, an Outstanding Citizen Resolution from the City of Oakland and a recent proclamation from the City as well.

A founding Board Member of the Greenlining Institute, David Glover also served on the boards of the Oakland Advisors, the Stewardship Council, the Oakland Partnership and the Berkeley Law Foundation.

Sondra Alexander, who worked with David at OCCUR for 32 years, told Oakland Local: “David was a great leader and an inspiration to me in terms of his work with youth. His innovation that he brought to East Oakland through the Eastmont technology center and their projects was just outstanding.”

Oakland City Councilperson Desley Brooks told Oakland Local, “David was one of my best friends. He touched so many people, his passing leaves a tremendous void on so many levels. ”

According to his sister Angela Blackwell, the leader of Policy Link, “The family is devastated,  David’s been the center of our world for so long. “  Characterizing Glover as an amazing father, husband, brother, and son, she said, “Even though he was so important to our family,  we saw we had to share him with community because because he cared so much about issues of justice.”

David Glover is survived by his wife Robin Glover, his sons Trent and Drew Glover, and his sister Angela Blackwell.  There will be a service in his honor on June 1, 2013 at 1 PM at  First Presbyterian Church at 27th and Broadway in Oakland.

Whites had an average wealth of $632,000 in 2010 while Blacks had about $98,000 and Hispanics had $110,000, according to a recent study by the Urban Institute.

“Such great wealth disparities help explain why many middle-income Blacks and Hispanics haven’t seen much improvement in their relative economic status and, in fact, are at greater risk of sliding backwards,” the report says.

Blacks start out at a disadvantage.

Whites begin with about 3.5 to 4 times more wealth than their Black and Hispanic counterparts in their “wealth-building years,” defined as 32 to 40 years old. By age 60, the wealth of whites increases to seven times the amount of wealth Blacks are able to accrue over the same amount of time.

Levels of home ownership and retirement savings are shown to contribute to the differences in wealth among races. In 2010, less than half of Black families owned homes, while more than three quarters of white families did.

Algernon Austin, director of the program on race, ethnicity, and the economy at the Economic Policy Institute, says that Blacks were more likely to have loss their homes during the recession because they couldn’t keep up with ballooning mortgage payments.

“What we’ve seen recently is a dramatic loss of wealth for African Americans because there has been a dramatic loss of home ownership,” Austin explains. “Blacks were more likely to be given high-priced sub-prime loans and were hit much harder by unemployment. Both factors—more loans, losing a job– makes it more difficult to keep up with mortgage payments.”

The recession has had a dire impact on the wealth of all Americans, with Hispanic families reporting their wealth declined by 40 percent between 2007-2010, according to the report. Blacks experienced a 31 percent decline while whites’ wealth declined by 11 percent.

Austin calls the loss of wealth experienced by the Black community a “symptom of high levels of unemployment and low wages, but particularly unemployment.”

Today, 27 percent of Blacks live in poverty. In March 2013, Blacks experienced an unemployment rate of 13.3 percent, compared to the national rate of 7.6 percent.

“Home ownership is a really important factor in terms of wealth, but so is unemployment,” Austin says. “If you’re going through frequent spells of unemployment, you’re either going to be losing wealth or going into debt.”

He adds, “The issue of jobs and income are important to address. The higher your income, the easier it is for you to build wealth. The government needs to enact policies that allow for Blacks to get greater income and get better job opportunities.”

Blacks represent about 11 percent of the total workforce, but 14 percent of the poverty-wage workforce, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

According to the Urban Institute findings, Black families saw the most dramatic decrease in their retirement assets, experiencing a 35 percent decline in retirement savings between 2007-2010.

“This finding is consistent with research that suggests lower income families are more likely to withdraw money from retirement savings after a job loss or other adverse event,” according to the Urban Institute report. “The high rates of unemployment and other financial needs that took hold with the Great Recession appear to have led to larger declines in retirement savings for Black families.”

While the Great Recession can account for much of the loss of wealth, there are other contributing factors to African Americans’ low-wealth, including policies designed to help Americans accrue wealth and policies aimed at low-income families, a large proportion of whom are African-American.

“There’s lots that the federal government does that if it was targeted to lower income Americans it could impact the wealth gap, “ Austin adds. “However, unfortunately, it’s a difficult battle because current policies benefit people who have significant political power and influence.”

In 2009, the federal government spent about $384 billion on policies that help families buy homes, start businesses, put their children through college, and retire.

Many of these policies, however, are administered through the tax code and “subsidize wealth building for the wealthiest among us, rewarding them for the size of their homes and investment portfolios,” according to a 2010 report by the Corporation for Enterprise Development titled “Upside Down: The $400 Billion Federal Asset-Building Budget.”

“The federal asset building budget provides a variety of things—opportunities for families to buy homes, start businesses, and prepare for retirement,” says Jermie Greer, the director of government affairs for CFED. “Yet, this $400 billion budget is skewed to benefit the very wealthy.”

According to the report, a middle-class family making $50,000 annually receives less than $500 in benefits from federal asset building policies, while families that make $100,000 receive $2,000 in benefits.

Tax payers who make in excess of $1 million, however, can see more than $92,000 in asset building support through mortgage and property tax deductions and investment tax breaks. Over half of the nearly $400 billion in benefits, according to the report, goes to the top five percent of tax payers.

“Conversation around tax reform so often focuses on the relationship between revenues for deficit reduction, but missed the mark on what is the social policy we want to address through the tax code,” Greer says.

“They can take some of the tax benefits that go to the very wealthy and bring them back down to people that are trying to build wealth and scratch their way out of poverty,” Greer adds.

Most lower- and middle-income families use home ownership to build wealth. In fact, home ownership accounts for the largest proportion of wealth among lower and middle-income households.

Yet, homeowners with lower incomes often don’t receive enough of a deduction to make a difference. According to the CFED report, nearly 80 percent of the value of mortgage and property tax deductions went to the top 20 percent of taxpayers.

“Social policy is really focused on income and the income people earn,” Greer says. “While people need jobs and it’s important that people are able to earn income, but that’s not the only piece of puzzle when you think about wealth.”

“We need to think not only about income, but providing benefits and incentives that help people build wealth through starting businesses, buying homes, being protected from predatory lenders.”

For low-income families in particular, federal programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, help ensure families have basic necessities, but don’t assist in helping to develop economically stable households.

“Many safety net programs even discourage saving: Families can become ineligible if they have a few thousand dollars in savings,” he Urban Institute report says.

Individuals who receive benefits from assistance programs can only have savings that equal up to $2,000 before risking losing their benefits. States currently have the flexibility to wave these limits, which keep people from accumulating money that can help them start a business or build wealth that can lead them out of poverty.

Thirty-six states currently waive limits to the SNAP and Temporary Assistance to Needed Families programs.

There are also programs, such as the Self-help Homeownership Opportunity Program (SHOP), which helps low- to moderate-income families purchase homes, that can help low-income families build wealth through home ownership, but the programs received less funding than low-income rental programs in 2010.

Austin says that through implementing more policies that benefit a wider range of people from varying socioeconomic backgrounds, we could begin to see the wealth gap “start shrinking instead of watching it grow.”

“It’s possible to prevent [the wealth gap] from growing larger and even shrinking it, but none of the policies that will ensure that will happen by themselves,” Austin says. “With all of these things, they aren’t likely to happen overnight.”

This article was originally published in the May 13, 2013 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.

Cross-posted at: http://newamericamedia.org/2013/05/whites-record-wealth-six-times-greater-than-blacks.php

May 19 marked what would have been the 88th birthday of Malcolm X, an anniversary that passed mostly unnoticed with little in the way of civic celebrations, pageants or parades. Yet the date is still worth remembering. Malcolm’s name is still revered by legions both nationally and internationally, and for good reason. A tireless, uncompromising foe of imperial wars, racism, economic exploitation and a staunch supporter of African and Third World liberation movements, Malcolm X rekindled black pride. His legacy and place in history decades after his brutal murder, a crime still shrouded in controversy and debate, are more secure than ever.

However, Malcolm’s standing in history has not exempted him or his legacy from questions, doubts or tragedies — a point we were reminded of when his grandson and namesake, Malcolm Shabazz, was beaten to death in a bizarre incident in Mexico City on May 13, only six days before the anniversary of his grandfather’s birth. The murder tossed a sad glare back at Malcolm X, and it wasn’t the first time since his assassination in 1965 that the slain leader’s family members have suffered publicly through a tragedy.

Nor was it the first time the young Shabazz was at the center of his family’s sad train of events. Back in 1997, when he was just 12 years old, Shabazz was convicted and sentenced for a home arson attack that resulted in the death of his grandmother, Dr. Betty Shabazz, Malcolm X’s widow.

There has been much speculation that the troubles plaguing Shabazz in his childhood stemmed from a tormented relationship with his mother, Qubilah Shabazz, Malcolm X’s second daughter. By all accounts, her life was a roller coaster of woes that included failed relationships, alcohol and drug abuse, and a roving lifestyle. She grabbed headlines in 1995 when she was indicted for allegedly plotting the revenge murder of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, whom her mother Betty Shabazz had publicly accused of inciting the murder of her husband. Eventually, Betty made peace with Farrakhan, even appearing with him at a fundraiser at Harlem’s Apollo Theater after he publicly expressed remorse over Malcolm X’s murder. But she did not forgive him. What part Betty’s antipathy toward Farrakhan played in Qubilah allegedly wanting to kill Farrakhan is subject to debate, but certainly the dramatic events had to have an effect on her son, Malcolm Shabazz.

The turmoil that engulfed some of Malcolm’s family members exploded into the news once again during a well-publicized spat over possession and sale of Malcolm’s memorabilia. And later, there was the arrest of Malikah Shabazz, another of Malcolm’s daughters, followed by a guilty plea on credit card fraud charges.

Then the inevitable happened. Malcolm himself, decades after his murder, was subject to the seemingly requisite historical revisionist take on his life in the best selling book, “Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention,” penned by the late Columbia University scholar and activist, Manning Marable.

In his exhaustive work, Marable tore apart what he considered myths and concoctions about Malcolm’s early and later life that had inflated him into a saintly superhero. Marable and his book were roundly attacked. But clearly, Malcolm’s life contained contradictions; like every other human being, he had real flaws.

Whether the bulk of the assertions in Marable’s version were true or not, however, they never succeeded in diminishing the towering contributions that Malcolm is today beloved for bringing to the freedom struggle. And for all the heart wrenching problems and lapses exhibited by some of Malcolm’s offspring, other family members have gone on to have successful careers in the arts and education, leading lives that add to the proud legacies of Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz. The pain of losing a famous father at a young age at the hands of assassins, and the personal journey of overcoming that loss to attain success, was movingly captured by Ilyasah Shabazz, Malcolm’s third daughter, in her memoir Growing Up X: A Memoir by the Daughter of Malcolm X.

Sadly, the tragedies of Malcolm X and his family will be painfully remembered. But they can never trump the triumphs of Malcolm, or the legacy of his name.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new ebook is How the NRA Terrorizes Congress—The NRA’s Subversion of the Gun Control Debate (Amazon). He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. He is the host of the weekly Hutchinson Report on KTYM 1460 AM Radio Los Angeles and KPFK-Radio and the Pacifica Network.

Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

Cross-posted at: http://newamericamedia.org/2013/05/once-again-legacy-of-malcolm-x-endures-tragedy.php

Local newsman, political commentator and culture critic J. Douglas Allen-Taylor will read from his new novel, Sugaree Rising and lead a discussion in May’s monthly installment of Saturday afternoon salons at the Temescal Branch Library.

Sugaree Rising, published by the San Francisco-based small press Freedom Voices, tells the story of African Americans on the coastal lowlands of South Carolina, known as Gullahs, who rise up against a forced relocation by federal authorities to make way for a Depression-era hydroelectric project.

The novel is a glimpse into a unique culture that developed among the coastal wetlands of the Carolinas that preserved many of the spiritual and social components of life in Africa…and recalls the stubborn struggle of African Americans in the south for cultural recognition and equality under brutal segregation in the years before the historic Civil Rights Movement following World War II.

The author is familiar to local readers for his news coverage and commentaries in East Bay Express, San Jose Metro, Berkeley Daily Planet , Oakland Local and in the journals Color Lines, and Race, Poverty & the Environment