Helping Others

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Growing up in New York helped me so much because you walk one block in a different direction and you're in a completely different environment with very different attitudes, very different cultures, very different wants and needs.

I wanted to get involved with the Lower Eastside Girls Club because I was discovered on my stoop on the Lower East Side. Some of the young girls will come up to me and say, "Oh, you're so lucky! It's so amazing. What can I do to get out of here?"

Am I going to tell them, "Sit around on your stoop and get discovered?" I can't do that. But I do say, "There is inherent value here. Look around at the people around you. I learned so much from growing up here. And there are great people who have come from here. So let's learn about them." That's what the Lower Eastside Girls Club is about. I didn't have a place like that to go to when I was younger. There's such a huge dropout rate, a huge teen-pregnancy rate, and people weren't addressing that. It's about recognizing and developing the community around you; you have the power to do that.

I always tell people: use your passion. Does your mom have Alzheimer's? Can your brother not afford school? Has an uncle come back from the war hurt? Are you afraid that you don't have health care? Is the neighborhood around you in shambles? Those are the things to invest yourself in politically because then you have something that's personally feeding you.

If you have something that makes you filled up, that you're already caring about, that you're already talking about, then you'll actually see progress. You're just feeding off that energy.

If we all listened to that little voice and we all worked to help that little thing that we know, then the whole world would be a different place, and we all would be doing our part.

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Posted By: texana ana @ 10/21/2008 7:27:02 PM

When in Texas, Rosario keeps talking about how she grew up/spent time in Garland (outside Dallas.) Guess it adds to her "street cred" to talk about growing up in NYC in every other sentence in this article and how rough she had it.....whatever!
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Posted By: cjustice2k @ 10/21/2008 12:46:12 AM

what a shocker! white folk talking about how black people have to prove something to satisfy their bar of excellence. puh-leez! all of this racist talk by krohn... so sad! the truth is a black candidate will always have something to prove to you. if only you held the white candidates and past presidents to the same standard. if you had, this country wouldn't be stuck with a loser like george bush. but obama is black so he has to tap dance for you. and to my knowledge, barack obama was never a beneficiary of affirmative action. white folks say that to minimize the accomplishments of intelligent black men and women. african-american persons clearly are too dumb (if i listen to you) to rise on their own merits. just be honest, krohn. you have issues with obama simply because he happens to be black. that is what i heard when i read your ridiculous post. you are entitled to your opinion; however, i am sick of hearing white folk talk about obama like he has to jump through hoops to reach your impossible standards just because of his race, but you continue to vote for white men who lack something as fundamental as character.
the days of blacks jumping for the white racist are over. with or without you, we are moving in a positive direction. this country is unified for the 1st time ever. no thanks to you; just in spite of you.
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Posted By: Jim Johnson @ 10/16/2008 1:03:27 PM

Obama's view of the future of America - Socialism which is the next step to Communism!!

Under socialism a ruling class of intellectuals, bureaucrats and social planners decide what people want or what is good for society and then use the coercive power of the State to regulate, tax, and redistribute the wealth of those who work for a living. In other words, socialism is a form of legalized theft.

The morality of socialism can be summed-up in two words: envy and self-sacrifice. Envy is the desire to not only possess another's wealth but also the desire to see another's wealth lowered to the level of one's own. Socialism's teaching on self-sacrifice was nicely summarized by two of its greatest defenders, Hermann Goering and Bennito Mussolini. The highest principle of Nazism (National Socialism), said Goering, is: "Common good comes before private good." Fascism, said
Mussolini, is "a life in which the individual, through the sacrifice of his own private interests??realizes that completely spiritual existence in which his value as a man lies."

Socialism is the social system which institutionalizes envy and self-sacrifice: It is the social system which uses compulsion and the organized violence of the State to expropriate wealth from the producer class for its redistribution to the parasitical class.

Despite the intellectuals' psychotic hatred of capitalism, it is the only moral and just social system.

Capitalism is the only moral system because it requires human beings to deal with one another as traders--that is, as free moral agents trading and selling goods and services on the basis of mutual consent.

Capitalism is the only just system because the sole criterion that determines the value of thing exchanged is the free, voluntary, universal judgement of the consumer. Coercion and fraud are anathema to the free-market system.

It is both moral and just because the degree to which man rises or falls in society is determined by the degree to which he uses his mind. Capitalism is the only social system that rewards merit, ability and achievement, regardless of one's birth or station in life.

Yes, there are winners and losers in capitalism. The winners are those who are honest, industrious, thoughtful, prudent, frugal, responsible, disciplined, and efficient. The losers are those who are shiftless, lazy, imprudent, extravagant, negligent, impractical, and inefficient. [What about the role of luckbeing in the right place at the right time or the wrong place at the wrong time? R. R. Pope}

Capitalism is the only social system that rewards virtue and punishes vice. This applies to both the business executive and the carpenter, the lawyer and the factory worker.