US Hispanic Marketing

We are suspicious of people who are running for office and naturally so. We are used to name brands promoted to us quickly and efficiently. So it is with names like General Motors and Pataki or Chrysler and Spitzer. Tom Suozzi is a relatively unknown entity without his party’s support. He is like Hyundai was when it started trying to make it in the American market. Can he do it quickly and efficiently? You never know goes the saying, but let me reveal this to you. He is the first person running for political office at the governor’s level or higher that I have been to influence. He knows that there are two and quarter million adults in New York State who do not have a diploma and he did a good job of spontaneously answering my question to an audience of African Americans and Haitian Americans in the Akwaaba Mansion in Brooklyn last night.

He quickly talked about those people who are not competitive because they do not have the diploma and he referred to people who are outside of the free society, people in jails. So he realizes that this affects every aspect of society. If he becomes governor, he will see it affects so many of the parts of state government that he has integrated with great success in Nassau County, including housing, prisons, child care, and employment.

In his speech, Suozzi addressed educational issues that affect New Yorkers and New York City residents in particular. By telling those community oriented people that he would promote the GED (pointing out that he knows that I promote the GED) he caused heads to nod up and down. It was like being in a church and everyone saying Amen. After Suozzi’s speech and comments, about half of the people introduced themselves to me or introduced me to others. A real estate company with a power team of four representatives stated it wanted my assistance in helping the community and the Citi Health Training Center: School of Health Careers was interested because I have GED programs in the three official languages of the GED, and the French program can help Haitians who have difficulty in English language preparation. These men and women, who want to mobilize their communities, probably had been looking for someone’s help for a long time. They will soon be able to tell many community residents after four hours of GED practice testing that they can take the GED test immediately and receive their diploma soon after completing the test. In the church, this is often called a miracle. We have to put the message out to people like Ruben Stoddard and Ice-T as they move forward with plans to “educate” the youth in schools where they live that “real” crime prevention and gang participation reduction occur when you help the people who are in gangs and contemplating joining gangs. Recently someone that I met in Albany from Buffalo told me that they had held a conference with eighty-eight gang members. I told that community activist that I would have given the GED Practice Test to all those who had no graduated and he said “Oh! Wow! We should have done that.” Few people know that among my students was a three time loser that a judge called “a menace to society.”

I found the entire team of people working for Tom Suozzi to be genuinely interested in my GED campaign. One immediately looked at my work on the internet to present my articles to Suozzi. Other staff members and supporters and I engaged in GED discussions as they relate to the improvement of people’s lives and to a political campaign. I have been in touch with dozens of elected officials and very few of them have taken this kind of interest. In the Congress, there has been only one such staff member who compares to them. This kind of teamwork can make a great difference in government and provide much better service to people in New York. I would be very pleased to share my ideas and vision with any community and political affiliation is no problem. I have been a consultant already to the office of Governor Jeb Bush in Florida, working with his educational policy and budget analyst.

Don’t the people deserve much more from the next administration in New York? I know New York City and Long Island well and the Lower East Side, Chinatown, Harlem, Washington Heights, the South Bronx, Corona, Jamaica, Bedford Stuyvesant, Sunset Park, Hempstead, Roosevelt, Freeport, Wyandanch, Central Islip, Brentwood, and Riverhead are areas that need more than physical rehabilitation, new buildings and facades. When this message is spread from Sleepy Hollow to Buffalo, great educational changes will really make New York a great place for all.

Photo of Tom Suozzi taken at the Akwaaba Mansion in Brooklyn.

MARTIN N. DANENBERG
7 BLAZER DRIVE
ISLANDIA, NY 11749
GEDHOTLINE@AOL.COM
631-348-1341
www.geocities.com/gedhotline
www.ahorre.com/noticias