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Black teenagers continue to be seriously hurt, maimed and even die in knife crimes and shootings on our streets every week. In a speech last week, LEE JASPER said that there’s a ready solution to the worsening problem

I want to talk to you today as a father of five boys and four girls, as a grandfather of five and, first and foremost, as a Black man.

Friday evening’s launch of the third OBV/London Borough of Lewisham Civic Leadership Programme was hugely successful.

The 30 young leaders who had come through the recruitment process heard OBV’s Merlene Carrington and Ashok Viswanathan describe how the six month programme would work, what was expected of them, the meetings they should attend and how best to use their nominated Lewisham elected member mentor for support.

Of course I’m a big fan of legislative measures that protect people’s rights from being abused and discriminated against. As we’ve seen in the last five years, we need those rights and protections even more when a nation goes through deep austerity measures. Powerful people and powerful institutions will, at the blink of an eye blame the weakest, sow division and do whatever they deem necessary to avoid accepting any responsibility for the financial state we’re in.

Within an hour of the Prime Minister’s ‘bold’ party conference speech in Manchester today, one Guardian commentator -hardly cheer leaders for the Tory party- suggested that; ‘...have you ever heard a party leader – let alone a Conservative PM – deliver such an impassioned attack upon discrimination?’

The part that the commentator was possibly referring to was when the PM touched up the race inequality that bedevils young BME men and women.

In it he said:

Press release: Immediate
Re: Lewisham Council and Operation Black Vote:-

Contact OBV press office:
020 8983 5430 / 07584 177 529

Lewisham Council and Operation Black Vote will launch this week another dynamic civic leadership programme.

Saatchi and Saatchi’s strong innovative ad campaign for Operation Black Vote - ‘If you don’t vote you take the colour out of Britain’ - took home the top prize for a PR campaign at a prestigious award ceremony last week.

The first ever UK Agency Awards, a joint venture between The Art of New Business and Don’t Panic Events, was held in a glamorous ceremony at the Emirates Stadium on Thursday attended by 200 industry professionals from 62 agencies across the UK.

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/09/how-reparations-hangs-over-david-camerons-jamaica-visit/408109/

A parallel must be drawn between the Barack Obama and Jeremy Corbyn's campaign for the leadership of the Labour Party. When Barack Obama set out to campaign for the Democratic Party nomination very few people gave him a chance, they all thought that it would fizzle out especially since Obama's brief foray into the national arena was his speech at the previous democratic convention. Obama went on to win the democratic nomination and against all odds become the first black president of America.

Some researchers are baffled as to why impoverished families in London continue to academically outperform other students around the country.

The turnaround in the capital’s schools, where disadvantaged students now outperform those in the rest of the country after years where they lagged behind, has been the subject of intensive research, in the hope it can be replicated elsewhere.

OBV supports the reparations movement in the Caribbean and beyond. Over the weeks and months ahead we’ll be talking to those at the heart of this debate. Today Michael McEachrane from Sweden, a driving member of two pan European movements for racial and reparatory justice, ENPAD and ERC, writes exclusively for OBV on the issue.