Answering Call for Black Activism

Barbra Cohen is a new style of black leader, a retired woman who spends her time planning meetings, dispensing information and working with other community members to address problems that plague African Americans. A wave of self-starting activists like Cohen is emerging-spurred by books like Tavis Smiley's "Covenant with Black America," released last February. Smiley, an author and journalist at PBS, and others want people to addressing real problems.

Smiley was joined at the Palace of Fine Art in San Francisco by Princeton Professor Eddie Glaude Jr., who spoke of the need to replace the old-school model of others of central leaders. He said young people with new ideas and fresh approaches must take responsibility and must be held held accountable. Instead of waiting for a modern Martin Luther King Jr., Glaude sys, people must take initiative and do it themselves.

Cohen is exactly the type of person Smiley was seeking. Cohen, one of 3,500 Bay area residents who attended the Covenant kickoff meetings last year, had just returned from Louisiana, where she had been taking care of her mother before and after the hurricanes hit. She was still in humanitarian mode.

Cohen and others formed the African American Action Network in July securing the right to health care and well being. In December, they organized a black health summit that offered work shops on violence, diabetes, heart disease and cancer. Soon they plan to move on to another Covenant and possibility on education. "It is unfortunate that when you do it from grass roots and individual levels, there is nowhere to go for funding," Cohen said. "But I was never going to give up."

Dwayne Jones, who directs San Francisco's Communities of Opportunity program, also helped plan a Covenant event. In June, residents of the housing projects were offered free concert tickets if they could recite the Covenants. Cohen suggested that group members volunteer to tell a story of black history at a local school, to encourage youth to work at the polls on election day or to volunteer to help students fill out scholarships and college bound applications.

Sources: San Francisco Chronicle