Blacks make 'covenant' for change
San Francisco Chronicle
BAY AREA
Blacks make 'covenant' for change
Plan of action gets rousing response in S.F., Oakland

Carrie Sturrock, Chronicle Staff Writer

Sunday, March 5, 2006


As if reciting a prayer, the crowd of more than 2,000 read the lines together in a solemn voice:

Covenant No. 1: Securing the right to health care and well-being.

Covenant No. 2: Establishing a system of public education in which all children achieve at high levels and reach their full potential.

Covenant No. 3: Correcting the system of unequal justice.

Those who attended recited all 10 covenants outlined in the new book, "The Covenant with Black America," at Oakland's Allen Temple Baptist Church on Saturday morning. A few hours later, roughly 1,000 more did the same at UCSF's Mission Bay campus.

Both town hall meetings were the last stops on a seven-city tour by broadcaster Tavis Smiley and Princeton professor and author Cornel West to call attention to the crises facing America's black community and to organize people around a plan of action detailed in the book -- which they said could soon lead to a mass movement for change.

"This is an awesome sight," Smiley told the Oakland crowd, which spilled into a parking lot where a large speaker broadcast the meeting from inside the church's packed auditorium. "It speaks to the hunger that exists in our community ... the hunger to be heard, the hunger to be empowered."

Released Feb. 22, "The Covenant" is now the top-selling nonfiction work on Amazon.com. It covers everything from a lack of affordable housing to the alarming incarceration rate of black men, and then offers examples of ways communities across the nation have addressed those problems. It also tells individuals how they can take action.

"We give you the facts," Smiley said. "I told you information is power -- knowledge is power. We can't be in an ideological battle to redeem the soul of this country if we don't have the facts."

The panel in Oakland also included mayoral candidate Ron Dellums; Princeton Professor Eddie Glaude; Angela Glover Blackwell, founder of PolicyLink, a nonprofit think tank; and U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland. The discussion, which included a question-and-answer session at the end, touched on a range of issues: the slow federal response to Hurricane Katrina, which ravaged New Orleans' poor African American community; the deepening inequalities between the rich and poor in the global world economy; the financial cost of the war in Iraq and the resources it's taking from problems in this country.

"The only way any of it will be public policy is if we have a mass movement ... demanding that legislation be enacted," Lee said. "We have to reorder our national priorities. This war has got to stop: $300 billion. $300 billion. $300 billion. $300 billion of our tax dollars. ... That's our money. We have to hold elected officials at all levels accountable."

Smiley envisions a televised forum for the 2008 presidential election in which candidates address issues raised in the book and are "prepared to talk to black folks about what matters to them."

Throughout the meeting, speakers received standing ovations and sounds of affirmation from the enthusiastic crowd. Oakland resident Dera Williams, 54, staked out a seat early because, she said, black America is finally coming together to address the problems plaguing it.

"It's a matter of life and death," she said. "We're going to perish if we don't stand up."

Wardell Hurst, a retired educator from the Oakland Unified School District, feels a similar sense of urgency, especially in public education.

"There's a lack of concern," he said. "And I guess, if we wanted to be real, there's an element of plain old institutional racism that keeps raising its head."

The book lists startling statistics in all the realms covered by the covenants. For example, 46 percent of black adults scored in the lowest category of the National Adult Literacy survey, compared with 14 percent of white adults.

"The Covenant" offers examples of efforts to improve these problems, which people across the nation can emulate. In the chapter on education, the book describes the Harlem Children's Zone, a community-based program that focuses not just on academics but also on fostering family stability and finding employment opportunities for people. Under the heading "What Every Individual Can Do Now," the book tells readers: "Read to your children or grandchildren every day" and "Become involved in your children's school."

Smiley told the crowd that West and Glaude together wrote a "covenant" on high school and college curriculum that educators can access for free at www.covenantwithblackamerica.com that details the struggle for black freedom in America. It has students read everything from "The Souls of Black Folk" by W.E.B. Du Bois to "Warriors Don't Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock's Central High" by Melba Pattillo Beals.

Until now, Glaude said, people in his generation have felt born out of place -- that they would have marched with Martin Luther King Jr. but instead just listen to hip-hop.

"Tavis has made me feel over the course of this journey I'm in the right time," he said to loud applause, later adding, "The covenant is our moment."

But it's not going to be easy to make such wholesale changes, Smiley warned.

"If we don't want this thing to be something that's just a phenomenon, it's going to require organization," he said.

And people can't rely on individuals the media have labeled "black leaders" to do the organizing, said psychologist Julia Hare, who spoke on the panel in San Francisco. In fact, she said, the book could make them obsolete.

"We can finally get rid of 'black leaders' because this book makes everyone in the room a leader," she said.

In both meetings, people asked questions afterward. One person asked the panel to define "black" and West replied, "In the modern world, those who are subject to white supremacist abuse." Another audience member asked why the panel had hope that youth would strive to better themselves, because he didn't see any evidence of that. Glaude responded, "If we don't demonstrate unconditional faith in our young folk, then they're going to act out because they feel there is no future for them."

Afterward, in the parking lot of Allen Temple, 17-year-old Darcel Armstead said he came to the meeting to support what's being talked about in the covenant. Hearing West in person was inspiring, he said.

"Most people don't ... make the effort to make a movement for black people," Armstead said. "African Americans actually want to go places in life -- that's the message he's putting out."

Chronicle staff writer Leslie Fulbright contributed to this report. E-mail Carrie Sturrock at csturrock@sfchronicle.com.