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June 30, 2009
ANTI VIOLENCE AND GED BONFIRE OF THE HUMANITIES
By Profesor Martin Danenberg “El Quijote del GED”
PAY PAL NOTICE
Something new in 2010. You can now order the GED program. It is so simple! Click on the word clic above my article (in the white section on the right). By clicking you can go to my website and find "Services" to order the GED program in English or Spanish. See the Pay Pal there. Thank you for taking this important, powerful step in your life. I really hope that a job or higher education awaits you, even induction into the military. Your future is important!
City Councilwoman Helen Foster told someone in the audience that her message for more community involvement to bring about change was more important than bringing on the Delphonics to sing (see my article “Wake Up Everybody”). Yes some people do lose track of the importance of ending the violence and bringing more education to more people in the Bronx.
I want to thank Terri Ham and Eric Stevenson for opening up their arms to William Bell (Sean Bell’s father) and me and permitting us to network with so many new people. William Bell told me that our recent appearance at Uniondale High School resulted in four gang members promising to leave the gang (Thomas Sapp, the Feurtado brothers, Ralph Greer, and Larry Love also spoke out to change the minds of our youth). Councilwoman Foster and I spoke briefly about GED practice testing and here is an elected official that instantly connected with what I told her. We cannot hold back our brightest youth who do not need to take a GED practice test. So we should not make the practice test mandatory because it will hold back lots of people. As Minister Abdul Hafeez Muhammad left the stage where he called upon men and women to respect each other, I handed him my business card and he told me that he was going to speak about the importance of the GED (but his time to speak had expired). I soon told the minister not to concentrate on GED classes and that practice testing was the key to mobilizing communities (typically only about twenty people are mobilized by a class).
William Bell and I received a tremendous outpouring of support from community leaders, pastors, educators, a karate instructor, recording artists, a poet, a parks department employee, people on the benches, entrepreneurs in security and modeling, and others just sitting and walking around.
William Bell told the audience that we must stop the violence and I told the audience that Mr. Bell and I are partnering to bring the message to our nation that for forty years African Americans and Latinos have had a low graduation rate from high school and not enough people have taken the GED. I left telling the people of the Bronx that we have to tell the youth not to drop out of high school and adults must get their GED. There are 1.6 million adults in New York City who do not have a GED and that makes up one of every four adults. It could be one of three adults in the Bronx, because things are worse in the Bronx. A woman standing close to the stage called out saying that her community was the worst in the Bronx.
My greatest GED event was in the Bronx. Former Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrión gave me the Bronx Supreme Court’s rotunda for that successful event. People are still talking about the event and sharing information with people all over the city. I would love to do GED Roundtables for the pastors in the Bronx, the City Council members, and the New York City Housing Developments soon. Let us mobilize the city instead of just talk, talk, talk. There are solutions!
MARTIN N. DANENBERG
7 BLAZER DRIVE
ISLANDIA, NEW YORK 11749
631-348-1341
GEDHOTLINE@AOL.COM
www.ahorre.com
www.ahorre.com/ged
www.geocities.com/gedhotline
www.aspira.org
Profesor Martin Danenberg June 30, 2009 09:26 AM