Woods, a graduate of WestPoint and the prestigious Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, has already aquired a rather impressive resume in his yet young career life, including two tours of duty in Iraq, as well as a stint working as an economic advisor for Governor David Patterson in New York State.

Anthony Woods California 10th District Congressional Candidate

Our interest in the candidacy of Woods is pretty obvious being that, if elected he would be the first openly gay African American elected to congress, and only one of four openly gay Congressional Representatives. However, his candidacy is actually quite interesting to me for other reasons not least of all, in the dawn of the election of President Obama, due to the similarities to the President's own, the most intriguing of which, in my opinion, is the fact that our current President was just about done paying off his student loans when he started his historic campaign!Anthony Woods was left holding the tab for his education, following his dismissal from the military, for his violation of Don't Ask Don't Tell (DADT), the unfortunate military policy introduced by the Clinton Administration in an effort to avoid automatic disqualification from military service of LGBT individuals.    Woods, like Obama, was born to a single mom, who worked as a housekeeper to help raise him, and managed to attend prestigious universities to help pull himself from a background with little promise to where he is now, running for congress in his own equally historic bid. I had the pleasure of speaking to Anthony Woods, on Wednesday afternoon July 1st. I started of by asking him why he is running for Congress. Strikingly, much like Obama, it is clear from Woods' responses that he is seeking to be a transitional candidate in the new post identity politics environment that Obama helped cement - there have been others, including former Richmond Mayor/former Virginia Governor L Douglas Wilder, Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachussetes, Newark Mayor, Cory Booker, and DC Mayor Adrian Fenty are some of the more notable - touting himself as the best qualified candidate in the race based on his life experiences, serving in the military, and his unique qualifications to fight for the rights of all Americans for affordable healthcare and economic opportunity based on his background of being raised by a single mother and facing many of the challenges that  the under privileged in our society face today.

While he does not shy away from his sexuality or his race, the latter being rather obvious, it was clear that he is seeking to appeal to his constituents based on what he perceives as their needs as opposed to his uniqueness, which, having worked for Obama myself, I have to say I think and believe it is a winning strategy.

You run for office to serve your constituents after all, and as such empathy with the issues that are of concern to them has to be paramount and being able to convey it and appear genuine and sincere while doing so is the one quality that will make a politician stand out.

Its pride week and to Greet The Press was just the perfect beginning to kick off this week's Pride events here in New York City. Presented by "The Future" a multimedia company targeting the LGBT community, Greet the Press was a spectacular gathering of modern gay media personalities representing print, online media and new media leaders in the black gay media. It was my privilege to have been invited to be one of the panelists on this, what I consider a very important forum produced by Dwight Allen O'Neal, and Richard E. Pelzer II, and co-moderated by Nathan Seven Scott and Cornelius Jones, Jr.


 

The event was billed as one to bring together the faces of the Black gay media, to address our lack of prominence on the national stage, to answer questions on important issues regarding our ability to tell our stories, and to hopefully harness the strength of our numbers into a bigger stronger more united force to reckon with.

I personally think this event succeeded in bringing many of us together and get us acquainted with each other, which I believe is the foundation for collaborative efforts in the future. The panels were broken up into three segments, including a separate panel for each of the three categories represented, i.e. print, online and new media. This gave the audience an opportunity to listen to the various perspectives of all of the panelists over a range of issues. It also gave us panelists the opportunity to express our views being that we were broken into small panels of four or five at a time,, as opposed to the possible fifteen that we could have had, had we all been on the same panel. The various panels addressed questions ranging from what we felt were the barriers to a greater synergy on the part of players in the Black gay media, why, if anything is it important to have a Black gay media, as well as why it might be important to have Black gays represent us in the mainstream media.

Pop icon Michael Jackson has today, Thursday June 25th, passed away following a massive coronary at his rented home in Los Angeles. Medics attending to a 911 call tried to revive him, when they found him not breathing, but the situation was too serious and required that the pop star was taken to the UCLA Medical center. The singer was getting ready to begin his comeback tour of 50 dates that was to begin this July 13th in London. 

He had been rehearsing in LA for the upcoming concert at the Staples center, which is why he was back in LA. It is thought that Michael Jackson's system may have been compromised by his addiction to prescription pills according to revelations by spokesman Brian Oxman, in a press conference issued at the UCLA Medical Center. It was also revealed tonight that Michael Jackson was also anorexic. I am currently watching live coverage on CNN, of a helicopter carrying the pop icons body, which just goes to show the enormity of this moment! There will be tributes paid all across the world all across TV channels and of course we would be remiss if we did not include some photographic tributes and a video or two.

Representative Barney Frank, yesterday introduced an inclusive version of the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), bill in congress that would finally outlaw discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. The bill was joined by Reps. Tammy Baldwin and Jared Polis, and is said to have bipartisan support in Congress. In a press release issued by the National Black Justice Coalition (NBJC), an advocacy group for the rights of the black LGBT community, Interim Executive Director Dr. Sylvia Rhue was quoted as saying, "This long-awaited legislation would call on members of congress to take a meaningful stand to end workplace discrimination".


 

Amazingly it is currently legal to fire somebody based on their sexual orientation in 30 States, or if they are transgender in an even more astonishing 38 states in the union! Rep Barney Frank one of few openly gay Congressmen, who has been at the forefront of progressive legislation on workplace discrimination is probably emboldened by the current Democratic majorities in both houses of congress not to mention, a White House that is seen as progressive on the question of equality in the workplace. Furthermore, it must be even more so encouraging given that large majorities of Americans are supportive of such legislation to protect the LGBT community in the work place. Notably the 12 States and over 100 localities that currently carry laws that protect the LGBT community against workplace discrimination, do cover a good 40% of the population, but 30 States is still a shockingly high number of States, not to mention that even 1 State alone is still 1 too many. Anything less than federal law LGBT-inclusive protection against discrimination in the workplace is frankly unacceptable.

Since the recent Iranian elections, most people here in America, and I'm assuming all across the west as far as I know - now that I live in the States, I don't always get news of what's going on elsewhere as much as I used to, and I don't switch onto the Beeb as much as I should - including all of the news channels and every single anchor without exception have been hailing the demonstration marches as a noble fight for Democracy against a tyrannical and dictatorial ruler in Ahmadinejad.

 

I would certainly caution against this kneejerk reaction, even though I seem to be in the huge minority, along, with President Obama apparently, who cautioned that a Mir-Hossein Mousavi Administration may not represent the turnaround that most people have jumped to the conclusion that it would be. Bob Baer, a former CIA operative in the Middle East, in his article in Time on Thursday June 18th, Don't Forget Mousavi's Bloody Past pointed out that Mousavi was the Iranian Prime Minister from 1981 - 1989, and alleges that he, Mousavi, bears the blood of Americans on his hands. Not that the CIA is my go to for the truth, but it is worthwhile to note that there are dissenting voices on the faultlessness of Mousavi. I am a fire breathing liberal, and a huge Obama supporter, for which reason, I liked the idea of an Ahmadinejad loss in the recent Iranian elections, particularly given that the storyline that was developing was that his loss would be translated as a win for Obama's softly softly approach toward Iran and as an endorsement by the Iranian people (whom conservatives like to proclaim they have no quarrel with - even as they support sanctions that would weaken the Iranian economy wreaking havoc to those very Iranian people's lives) of his extension of an open hand of friendship and open dialogue. Alas, the election did not go as I had hoped, against the slim odds that Mir-Hossein Mousavi might have toppled Ahmadinejad.

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It is almost serendipitous that just as I completed writing the title of this article, a news segment came on CNN regarding healthcare, a very sad story about a volunteer organization, Remote Area Medical that provides healthcare for Americans without insurance. Perhaps one could put it down to serendipity, or perhaps, it is purely a case of the fact of the urgency of the issue, and the fact that maybe one cannot go a full news day without hearing a story regarding healthcare, the lack of healthcare and the atrocities faced by regular every day Americans around healthcare and specifically insurance.

The thing about healthcare here in the USA is that actually medical care is not bad at all, so in fact, this debate is one that should really be a framed as a debate about health insurance.

When one can get their care paid for, it is in fact great quality care that is often provided in a timely manner in environments full of the latest equipment, well trained doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals. So in fact, I think that framing the healthcare debate as one about healthcare is a bit of a misnomer, because it suggests that there is something wrong with the provision of healthcare in America, which in fact, based on my experiences, which are varied and extensive right across the globe, there really isn't, or at least, it is pretty much as good as any care I have had anywhere else, perhaps with the exception of France, where the system is excellent both at the point of delivery as well as in the manner of payment. The particular segment on CNN featured Dr. Stan Broc, founder/Director of Remote Area Medical, a volunteer medical provider organization which provides healthcare to people in remote areas that are hard to reach and whose residents would otherwise have no access to urgently needed healthcare as well as Dr. Ross Isaacs a volunteer with the organization. Dr. Ross Isaacs described situations where for example, there are Americans with diabetes, who are forced to go without insulin for months because they cannot afford to pay for it. Fredericka Whitfield who was anchoring the news show, pointed out that some images from the organization's video looked more like video taken in places in the third world, and indeed the story sounded like one that you would expect from a third world country. President Obama is currently concentrating on this very question, and has in fact dedicated his last two Saturday radio/web addresses to the question of healthcare reform.

President Obama - wow, it feels so good to write that, so I will write it again, yes, President Obama, has very cleverly, as we have come to expect from him, tied the question of healthcare reform to the economy, tying economic recovery to healthcare reform, and managing to garner the support of small business organizations and even healthcare providers, who, faced with the reality that the question of healthcare reform is one whose time has come and is inevitable, have decided to jump on board to make sure they are not left off the negotiation table. To President Obama's credit, again, of course the health insurance companies would not have come aboard, were it not for the fact that the President himself held out an extended hand, pointing out to them, that reform was an idea whose time has come, and as he often likes to say, there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come, and invited them to join along.

The date was June 1, 1921 when "BLACK WALLSTREET", the name fittingly given to one of the most affluent all-BLACK communities in America, was bombed from the air and burned to the ground by mobs of envious whites.

In a period spanning fewer than 12 hours, a once thriving Black business district in northern Tulsa lay smoldering--a model community destroyed and a major African-American economic movement resoundingly defused.