Kaiser Family Foundation

May 3 2013

Singer teams up with organizations to create “Empowered”

You know her best as a multi-platinum recording artist and a 14-time Grammy award-winning singer, songwriter and producer.

But Alicia Keys has also made quite a name for herself as a philanthropist and AIDS advocate.
It was in 2003, on her first trip to Africa, that Keys witnessed firsthand the disease’s devastation.
When she returned to the United States, she co-founded “Keep a Child Alive,” an organization that has raised millions to care for HIV/AIDS patients in Africa and India.

Karen Bass  |   OW Guest Columnist
Jun 16 2011

Downright scary

The Republican budget authored by Budget Committee Chairman U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) is a downright scary proposal that slashes Medicare benefits and puts insurance companies in charge of seniors’ healthcare.

Medi-Cal is California’s Medicaid program.

Nobody is spared in this slash-and-burn Republican budget. Not seniors, not working families, and not children.

Mar 17 2011

In the face of wealth loss

There they go again. Don’t they know any better?

African Americans continue to be battered worse than any other minority group by the nation’s three-year-long, and-counting, economic crisis. In both stand-alone and comparative terms, from the top to the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder, they’ve suffered a severe loss of the little wealth they possessed, and have almost no protection against a future economic shock.

Across Black America

Here’s a look at African American people and issues making headlines throughout the country.
 

Alabama
Freeman A. Hrabowski, president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, will address the annual African American Business Council luncheon on June 28. Hrabowski, who is chairman of President Barack Obama’s Advisory Commission on Education Excellence for African Americans, has a national reputation for his work studying the performance of minority students in math and science. Hrabowski, named one of the 10 best college presidents in the country by Time magazine, was a child leader in the Civil Rights Movement in Birmingham in the 1960s.
 

Arkansas
The Liberty Counsel filed a motion and a brief in United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas seeking to intervene on behalf of a Concepts of Life crisis pregnancy center to defend against a suit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Reproductive Rights. The groups seek to impose a permanent injunction before the Human Heartbeat Protection Act goes into effect July 18. Liberty Counsel also filed a brief opposing the ACLU’s request for an injunction. The “Heartbeat” bill states that when a woman seeks an abortion at or after the 12th week, doctors must test for a fetal heartbeat before an abortion is performed and inform the pregnant mother that the child in her womb has a heartbeat. If a heartbeat is detected, a woman cannot have an abortion, except in cases of rape, incest, and if a mother’s life is in danger. “As we promised when the legislation was introduced, Liberty Counsel will defend this law without reservation for the people of Arkansas, born and pre-born,” said Matt Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel. “No right is more foundational than the right to life. Without life, all other rights are irrelevant,” concluded Staver.