General

Alpha Phi Alpha Boycotts Arizona

i don’t normally post about other D9 orgs (besides the Zetas), but this email about the Alphas came across my inbox this morning (thanks, joe) so i just had to share

Alpha Phi Alpha to boycott Arizona
Moving annual convention to Las Vegas

Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc., the oldest integrated and historically black Greek-lettered organization in the world, today announced is moving its 104th Anniversary Convention from Phoenix, Arizona.

“Late Thursday, April 29, our national Board of Directors voted unanimously to rescind the location of Phoenix, Arizona as our meeting location of the 104th Anniversary/90th General Convention in July, and to denounce the egregious immigration act signed recently by the governor of Arizona.,” said Herman “Skip” Mason, the fraternity’s national general president.

“It was the full opinion of the board that we could not host a meeting in a state that has sanctioned a law which we believe will lead to racial profiling and discrimination, and a law that could put the civil rights and the very dignity of our members at risk during their stay in Phoenix Arizona.”

The event, which was scheduled to take place from July 21 to 25, will be moved to Las Vegas, Nevada. The convention, and the fraternity’s special Summit on the African-American Male, was expected to draw up to 10,000 visitors to Arizona—adding hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue to the Phoenix economy.

The fraternity, formed in 1906, at the Ivy-League Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., is considered one of the most influential groups in the United States. It includes among its membership: civil rights leader and former U.S. Ambassador to the UN Andrew Young; McDonald’s President and COO Don Thompson; National Urban League President and former mayor of New Orleans Marc H. Morial; CNN Political Analyst Roland Martin; White House Deputy Associate Director of Intergovernmental Affairs Michael Blake; and several high-ranking members of the U.S. House and Senate.

It is also the fraternity of the late Martin Luther King Jr. and Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. President Ronald Reagan named several members to key posts during his presidency as did former Presidents George Bush, Bill Clinton and President Barack Obama.

“Our late Alpha brother the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, in a letter he wrote while sitting in the Birmingham Jail, ‘injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’ Alpha Phi Alpha’s decision to boycott Arizona continues that same fight, fought during the Civil Rights era.”

“We will not only speak with our voices and our feet, we will speak with our economic clout; and we will not spend our money in Arizona and urge other organizations and people who believe in equality under the law, to do the same,” said Mason.

back in business

sorry for the delayed outage for the past week+. i’d been working with some local chapters to host their sites on here and was in the process of setting them up with a blog. something went wrong with my hosting provider’s installer that crossed the wires so they had to restore the blog database from a backup. unfortunately, they had to go back further than i preferred, but i’m very glad we didn’t lose everything. big thanks to chase up in oregon for taking care of it. i’ll be going trying to remember the missing posts and re-post them.

off to orlando

i’m headed to orlando tomorrow morning to attend the celebration of history II. i’ll be blogging live during the event so hopefully there’s a signal i can piggyback on to publish my posts. at the very least, i’ll be tweeting so you can follow me on twitter.

Sigma Owned: Acapulco Taqueria, Mimosa Champagne Lounge

this past weekend, a few of us who crossed from the omicron pi (cal poly SLO) chapter decided to get together for an informal thing at acapulco taqueria in hayward, CA. bro. alejandro gamarra started this place out as a taco truck in the early 90s and now has 3 locations in hayward. after a few drinks and a bottle of what we christened as “blue phi tequila” (aka clase azul plata), we headed up to oakland to check out mimosa champagne lounge. story was raul from omicron zeta (san francisco state) was the bartender and since he was sands with one of us who hadn’t seen him in years we had to make it. it didn’t take long before we ran into a few more brothers from OZ. bro “JP” (owner) threw us a round of beers, steve, raul and a few more brothers who’s name i forget. blue phi tequila, remember?

anyway, here’s my plug for these businesses. for those in the bay area, pay them a visit.

acapulco taqueria

http://www.yelp.com/biz/acapulco-bar-and-grill-hayward

http://www.yelp.com/biz/acapulco-taqueria-hayward

mimosa champagne lounge

http://www.mimosachampagnelounge.com

http://www.yelp.com/biz/mimosa-champagne-lounge-oakland

election results

as posted on thecause1914 earlier this week:

Pres. Jimmy Hammock
1st vice. Jonathan Mason
2nd vice. Lonnie Wall
Tres. Larry Mungin
Edu. William Powell
BBB. Winston O’Neil
SA. Dr. Joseph West
Colliegate reps. Chris Perry,Chris Calvin
Legal Counsel. John Turner