District Chronicles V15 Issue 20 by District Chronicles

SATURDAY

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H: 49 PARTLY

Jan 15

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CLOUDY

Jan 16

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SUNDAY

Jan 17

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MONDAY

Jan 18

H: 29 SUNNY L: 16

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Group puts together 2016 voting guide for Black women Page 4 January 14 - January 20, 2016

College to help students fill FAFSA Page 11 www.districtchronicles.com

Volume 15 Issue 20

Youtube/White House

Editorial

The Right’s War Against Voting Rights

By Lee A. Daniels George Curry Media Columnist

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hose who’ve wondered how, after the Civil War abolished slavery, America became in reality an apartheid state should be paying close attention to the machinations of the Republican Party and the conservative movement. They’ve been providing examples of how democratic forms can be used to deprive some citizens of their rights. Nowhere is that more evident than in the right-wing effort to limit some Americans’ right to vote in order to restore White conservative rule. From the Supreme Court’s 2013 gutting of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act in Shelby County, Ala. v. Holder to a flood of laws and rules enacted by Republicancontrolled state legislatures during President Obama’s tenure, conservatives have been trying to undermine two of the society’s most powerful progressive forces of the last half-century. The first is the empowerment of the Black vote produced by the legislative victories of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. The result: the Black vote became the bedrock of the Democratic Party, and the foundation of President Obama’s election and re-election victories. The second is the demographic revolution of these past decades that has produced the increasingly influential vote of Latino, Asian, and Muslim Americans. Substantial majorities of these groups vote Democratic, too. The GOP has used the legislative gerrymandering process to literally gather conservative voters into geographical “fortresses” primarily in exurban and rural areas where there are only small numbers of Americans of color and progressive-leaning voters to be found. Laws and rules enacted by Republican-dominated state legislatures will block enough voters of color from the ballot box in this year’s presidential contest for them to re-gain the White House. A central plank of that plan is the latest conservative White-rule

Right wing conversatives stilll trying to limit the voting rights of minorities.

gambit before the U.S. Supreme Court: Evenwel vs. Abbott. At first glance, the case, coming from Texas and seeking a change in how legislative districts for the state senate there are drawn, seems simply to ask a neutral question: Should state legislative districts be based on the total number of people living there (including children, legal immigrants who’ve yet to become naturalized citizens, ex-offenders who are barred from voting, and so on) or just the number of eligible voters? The U.S. Constitution doesn’t discuss the issue at all. But two U.S. Supreme Court decisions in the 1960s declared that the 14th Amendment requires states to follow a “one person, one vote” rule. However, Evenwel would reverse that expansion of democracy. It would have legislative districts be based only on the number of eligible voters because, it claims, the one-person-one vote standard unconstitutionally dilutes the influence of eligible voters in lesspopulous districts. This is where Evanwel’s ‘eligible voter’ argument reveals itself. For throughout American history, that argument has been advanced principally by those seeking to exclude another racial or ethnic group

from gaining electoral power. So, it’s no surprise that the Evenwel case comes from Texas, which has experienced explosive growth of its Latino population during the past two decades. And it’s no surprise that the Project for Fair Representation has played a central role in its journey through the legal system. This is the same organization that led the 2013 challenge to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and has been the guiding force in the Fisher case now before the Supreme Court seeking to destroy the affirmative action plan at the University of Texas at Austin. Its involvement leaves no doubt that the Evenwel challenge isn’t about fair representation but about White conservatives trying to block Texas’ surging Latino population from gaining political power. Lee A. Daniels is a longtime journalist based in New York City. His essay, “Martin Luther King, Jr.: The Great Provocateur,” appears in frica’s Peacemakers: Nobel Peace Laureates of African Descent (2014), Race Forward: Facing America’s Racial DivideA in 2014 published by Zed Books. His new collection of columns is available at

Finance

Eleven steps to better money management in 2016 By Eric Easter Urban News Service

CULTURAL AMBASSADOR TO THE WORLD

2. Audit your lifestyle How much does your daily lifestyle contribute to your financial health? One of the easiest ways to keep money in your pockets is to stop needlessly spending it in the first place. 3. Go automated One of the most effective ways to save money is by opening an account and setting up automatic debits, to put money away in a separate savings account. The day after payday, a portion of your automatic deposit should head to this separate account to ensure consistency and saving of the largest percentage of your income possible. This trains you to live on only a portion of your income and relieves the stressful thought of saving from your mind 4. Learn more/read more Commit to learning something more about how to make your money grow. Consider committing to finding new ways to put your money to work so it can be fruitful and multiply. 5. Celebrate small victories

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1. Budget your time first In life, distractions that we are not obligated to deal with, pay for or spend time on can often overtake us; ultimately, these cost money. Take the time to consider what mundane tasks might be avoidable and how to make better use of your valuable time.

Following these steps could help manage your money better in 2016.

Take a weekend to get all your online accounts and account statements in one place and look at your victories – money you have earned, saved and invested, or goals you have met in the past year. If you have contributed to your 401(k) at work, celebrate. Looking at the big picture can be overwhelming and sometimes prevent you from recognizing small steps you have made toward your goals. 6. Add your financial goals to your regular “to-do list” Many people put these on separate lists. Write your financial goals down and put them on your list of things to do every day to remind yourself of your goals. Guy-Max Delphin is the CEO and president of Delphin Investments. Here are his words of financial wisdom: 7. Have a “money vision” Have a unique vision for how you want to invest that matches what you believe in. If you are relatively new to investing, a conservative strategy that minimizes your risk is always best. Then make small-size investments to limit short-term pain. 8. Adjust your plans for “right now” Review and re-evaluate all of your insurance. You may have

started the policies a while ago, but, do they still protect you? After that, check to see whether there are new deals or new products that will save you money on your premiums 9. Review If you are an experienced investor, review your portfolio to make changes that reflect new business trends or the current economic environment. Do you think the same way about the industries you invested in as you did when you first invested? 10. Plan for the worst Nobody wants to think about dying, but the major difference between wealth in the Black community today and that of other communities has almost everything to do with what we leave behind for the next generation. Make a will or review the one you have and make sure your wishes are very clear about the management of your money and belongings. 11. Watch financial television (but only sometimes) In general, you should avoid taking investment advice from a TV pundit. However, channels such as CNBC can be very helpful in learning the lingo of Wall Street, stocks, finance and new developments in business.

24 hours a day. 7 days a week. 52 weeks a year. Visit www.districtchronicles.com.

Masazumi Chaya Associate Artistic Director

Rachael McLaren, photo by Andrew Eccles

avings, bills, plans and budgets – these things rarely appear on Yuletide shopping lists. Yet, the days and weeks of procrastinating for the New Year are over. Experts say that it is never too late to start improving financial health. Urban News Service asked leading authorities Ben Carter and Guy-Max Delphin how readers can dedicate 2016 to bolstering their personal finances. Ben Carter is the host and producer of “Manage Your Damn Money. This is what he advises:

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Black women’s roundtable releases its 2016 voter guide T he Black Women’s Roundtable – the women and girls empowerment arm of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation – has released its 2016 Voter Guide. The guide as well as a survey of the 2016 Presidential candidates can be found at www.bwrvoterguide2016. org. “Today, we are on the eve of another defining moment in our nation’s history as we gear up for the 2016 Presidential Election cycle that will elect the 45th president of the United States. Voters will also elect 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives, 34 U.S. senators, 13 state governors and 86 of the 99

state legislative chambers,” said Melanie L. Campbell – convener of the Black Women’s Roundtable and president and CEO of the National Coalition. The 2016 BWR Voter Guide is a non-partisan resource for voters to prepare to participate in national, state and local elections in their communities. The voter guide offers a unique opportunity for voters to learn about the presidential candidates and their vision for the country. The guide includes key 2016 election dates for caucuses, primaries, general election, state voter registration deadlines, republican and democratic conventions, official

presidential debates and more. In August 2015, the BWR and our partners (APRI, NAACP and N.O.B.E.L. Women) sent letters inviting 21 declared democratic and republican presidential candidates that were ranking in the nation’s polls, to submit their written responses to our 2016 Presidential Election Questionnaire. Four of those candidates dropped out the race since the initial request went out three months ago. The BWR Voter Guide includes candidate profiles for the 17 presidential candidates remaining in the race as of last week, along with the written responses received from six of the presidential candidates.

Divine Intervention

Black clergy should support same-sex marriage. By Gilbert H. Caldwell Religion News Service (RNS) – Last week, Chief Justice Roy Moore of the Alabama Supreme Court prohibited the issuing of marriage licenses to samesex couples, despite the decision of the Supreme Court to legalize same-sex marriage in all of the 50 states. We, who marched from Selma to Montgomery in 1965 to protest the denial of voting rights for Blacks and have seen Congress and the Supreme Court whittle away some of the provisions of the Voting Rights Act, ought not oppose the civil rights of LGBT persons and marriage equality. There is an inconsistency in our commitment to human rights for all if we deny the rights of samegender-loving persons to marry. They may be trite, but I remind us of the words “None of us are free, until all of us are free.” Opponents of same-sex marriage claim the “tradition” of marriage between a man and a woman as a rationale for their opposition. So did those who resisted racial integration because of the “tradition” of racial segregation. Faith-based opponents of same-sex marriage claim the Bible as their source for the opposition. So did faith-based opponents of racial integration. I am beginning to understand why some of my colleagues are drawn to ethical culture and humanism and view the Constitution as being more of a guide to inclusivity than is the Bible. Many millennials are wondering why so many “people of the Book” resist the inclusion of all people as detailed by the Constitution, Bill of Rights and other founding documents. They wonder if the Bible is “yesterday” and the Constitution is for today and tomorrow. Black clergy recognize that the young people of the Black Lives Matter Movement, some of whom are gay and lesbian or gay-affirming, have raised some questions about replicating our approach and have some reservations about the authentic justice commitment of the church.

IN TROUBLE WITH THE IRS? Inconsistencies in human rights can steer the nation in the wrong direction.

Why are we in religion so concerned about the “spread of secularism” when we are watering the seeds of a growing secularism in our exclusion of the rights of same-sex couples to marry, and our resistance to immigration from Mexico and Syria? Some religionists must begin to acknowledge their exclusion of these groups has become an evangelism tool for growing anti-religion attitudes. Each day I am convinced of the truth of the words of James Russell Lowell: “New occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient good uncouth.” Donald Trump, with his theme; “Make America Great Again,” is the leader of those who cannot accept the fact that each day we are reminded of “new occasions.” Therefore, we must make our religion and our politics respond to “the new,” while making contemporary the principles of our religion and our politics. If the “greatness” of the U.S. or of religious institutions is to be found in a retreat to the past, God

help us. I was ordained a deacon in a racially segregated Methodist church 60 years ago. I was denied admission to Duke Divinity School because of my race. Neither I, nor any of us who are Black, believe there was “greatness” in racial segregation worth resurfacing. I am saddened by my fellow religionists who are drawn to support Trump because he seeks a return to the “good old days.” They were not good for Blacks, for women, or a host of other Americans. May all of us, particularly those of us who claim a religious faith, begin to commit ourselves to the idea and practice that “change” must be authentic change, rather than a subtle way to conceal the fact that we have not changed. The Rev. Gilbert H. Caldwell contributes to the Truth in Progress website and is co-producing a documentary called “From Selma to Stonewall: Are We There Yet?”

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District Chronicles | Jan. 14 - Jan. 20, 2016 | 5

Cover

Obama begins final year with plea for gun control

By Hazel Trice Edney

The funding 200 new Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) agents and investigators to help enforce our gun laws. An allocation of $500 million for the increase of mental health treatment and mandatory reporting to the background check system. Shape the future of gun safety technology through research by the Departments of Defense, Justice, and Homeland Security. Obama’s stance drew immediate applause from civil rights leaders who daily endure the pain of community violence. “The year is less than a week old, and already more than 120 people have been killed by guns. Gun violence has outpaced automobile accidents as a leading cause of death,” said National Urban League President Marc Morial. “Gun violence is undeniably one of the worst public health crises in American history, yet our elected leaders have been woefully unresponsive. It’s hard to imagine such inaction in the face of any

other plague responsible for such death and devastation,” he added. The National Action Network’s Rev. Al Sharpton also said the proposals could reduce street crime. “Our community is disproportionately ravaged by gun violence and the President’s executive action today is an important step towards taking these deadly weapons off our streets. From tragic mass killings in Charleston (South Carolina), Sandy Hook (Connecticut) and San Bernardino (California) to the everyday carnage in inner cities, we clearly cannot allow this violent trend to continue,” Sharpton said in a statement. The 40-minute speech outlined the specifics of his proposed gun measures, including a refutation by Republicans claiming his executive orders would violate the Constitution’s Second Amendment right to bear arms. “No matter how many times people try to twist my words around – I taught constitutional law, I know a little about this,” he said to applause. “But I also believe that we can find ways to reduce gun violence consistent with the Second Amendment.” The President paused and wiped away tears as he recalled the Sandy Hook Elementary School

Pete Souza/White House

(TriceEdneyWire.com) – President Barack Obama, citing the thousands of people who are killed each year by guns, gave a tearful address before the nation last week pleading for Congress to pass “common sense” gun control legislation and announcing his use of executive orders to make progress. “Every single year, more than 30,000 Americans have their lives cut short by guns – 30,000. Suicides. Domestic violence. Gang shootouts. Accidents. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have lost brothers and sisters, or buried their own children. Many have had to learn to live with a disability, or learned to live without the love of their life,” Obama said in the East Room, surrounded by hundreds of victims of gun violence or supporters of gun control. “A number of those people are here today. They can tell you some stories. In this room right here, there are a lot of stories. There’s a lot of heartache. There’s a lot of resilience, there’s a lot of strength, but there’s also a lot of pain. And this is just a small sample.” In a nutshell, the following are some of the president’s proposals:

Mandatory background checks by gun sellers or they will suffer criminal penalties.

President Obama chats with the attendees following a Jan. 4 meeting in the Oval Office on the executive actions he can take to curb gun violence

tragedy of Dec. 21, 2014. That’s the day that 20-year-old mentally ill Adam Lanza shot and killed 20 first grade children and six adults, including his mother. The President had been introduced by Mark Barden, whose son Daniel was killed in the Sandy Hook massacre. “Every time I think about those kids, it gets me mad,” Obama said as he wiped away tears. “And by the way, it happens in Chicago every day.” The weight of the issue and the public messaging issued from the White House before and after the speech indicates that gun control may be another legacy for Obama. So far, it has mainly been health care, which has stood against every court test so far. Republicans

have vowed to challenge Obama’s executive orders and GOP presidential candidates say they will repeal them if they win the White House. Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin immediately tweeted his opposition: “No matter what President Obama says, his word does not trump the Second Amendment.” Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus chimed in with a stinging statement, “The recent tragedies that have gripped our country are heartbreaking, but none of the unilateral restrictions President Obama is proposing would have prevented them, making his proposal all the more insulting and political.”

Malcolm X, MLK on absolute necessity of Black Unity By A. Peter Bailey (TriceEdneyWire.com) - Last year, in 2015, we, as Black folks, paid a heavy price for our resolute refusal to organize a national unity movement to promote and defend our economic, cultural, political and educational interest in what is basically a white supremacist/ racist society. The flagrant shooting and killing of unarmed Black folks— including children—throughout the country, the increasing of overt White supremacist/racist incidents on various White colleges and university campuses, the public questioning of the intelligence of Black students by Supreme Court Justice Anthony Scalia, the general lack of any discussion about race relations in the presidential debates, low income Black males killing each other at an alarming rate, and the mass incarceration and racial

profiling of Black folks are just some of the consequences of our refusal to create a unity movement as advocated by Brother Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In a 1963 letter to nine civil rights leaders, Brother Malcolm stated, “If Capitalistic Kennedy and Communistic Khrushev can find common ground on which to form a united front despite their tremendous ideological differences, it is a disgrace for Negro leaders not to be able to submerge our ‘minor’ differences in order to seek a common solution to a common problem posed by a common enemy.” In another 1964 statement announcing the launching of his new organization, The Organization of Afro-American Unity, Brother Malcolm noted its purpose “to unite Afro-Americans and their organizations around a non-religious and non-sectarian construc-

6 | Jan. 14 - Jan. 20, 2016 | District Chronicles

tive program for human rights.” Dr. King, in his last, must-read book - Where do we go from here: Chaos or Community? - was equally clear about the absolute necessity for unity. Dr. King wrote: “The Pharaohs had a favorite and effective strategy to keep their slaves in bondage: keep them fighting among themselves. The divide-and-conquer technique has been a potent weapon in the arsenal of oppression. But when slaves unite, the Red Seas of history open and the Egypts of slavery crumble. “This plea for unity is not a call for uniformity. There must always be health debate. There will be inevitable differences of opinion. The dilemma that the Negro confronts is so complex and monumental that its solution will of necessity involve a diversified approach. But Negroes can differ and still unite around common goals.

“There are already structured forces in the Negro community that can serve as the basis for building a powerful united front— the Negro church, the Negro press, the Negro fraternities and sororities, and Negro professional associations. We must admit that these forces have never given their full resources to the cause of Negro liberation. “There are still too many Negro churches that are so absorbed in a future good ‘over yonder’ that they condition their members to adjust to the present evils ‘over here.’ Too many Negro newspapers have veered away from their traditional role as protest organs agitating for social change, and have turned to the sensational and the conservative in place of the substantive and the militant. “Too many Negro social and professional groups have degenerated into snobbishness and a

preoccupation with frivolities and trivial activity. But the failures of the past must not be an excuse for the inaction of the present and the future. These groups must be mobilized and motivated. This form of group unity can do infinitely more to liberate the Negro than any action of individuals. We have been oppressed as a group and we must overcome that oppression as a group. “Through this form of group unity, we can begin a constructive program which will vigorously seek to improve our personal standards. …” If we refuse to develop the kind of unity advocated by these two warriors, 2016 will be as unproductive and deadly as 2015. A. Peter Bailey, whose latest book is Witnessing Brother Malcolm X, the Master Teacher, can be reached at apeterb@verizon.net.

Gun control alone can’t curb violence

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By Jesse Jackson NEWS ANALYSIS (TriceEdneyWire.com) – America may now have more guns than people. As President Barack Obama announces new executive action on gun control, U.S. gun manufacturing is a growth industry, almost doubling since the beginning of Obama Administration (5.6 million in 2009; 10.9 million in 2013). From 2001 to 2013, according to a Centers of Disease Control and Prevention report, 406,496 Americans were killed with firearms on U.S. soil. In contrast, the number of U.S. citizens killed by terrorists at home or abroad over the same year’s number 3,380. Chicago suffered a spike in gun homicides in 2015 with 470 homicides and 2,939 shooting victims, the worst of all U.S. cities. Studies show a clear correlation: the more guns, the more homicides and the more people shot. Cities are racked by gun violence, yet gun ownership is much more prevalent in rural areas, as vividly displayed by the Bundy bunch that occupied an Oregon wildlife refuge over the weekend. According to a General Social Survey report, gun ownership is declining. About 35 percent of adults were estimated to live in a household with a firearm in 2014, down from over half in the early 1980s. As hunting has declined in the country, so has gun ownership.

Gun ownership is higher among whites than among Blacks or Hispanics, higher among men than women. Gun ownership rises with income. It is higher among those earning more than $90,000 a year than among those earning less than $25,000. It is highest in the South Central U.S. and lowest in the Northeast and Pacific regions. Now weapons designed for the purpose of mass killing in war are available for purchase at gun shows, online and at many gun stores. These weapons are powerful enough to stop trains or strafe planes that are landing or taking off. These are tools for terrorists, easily available for sale in America. Obama has already delivered 15 national statements after shocking incidents of gun violence. Yet no national reforms have been passed – or even gotten much consideration. After the Charleston massacre, the Economist magazine compared mass shooting in the U.S. with the grotesque air pollution in China: a horrible health hazard which the country appears incapable of addressing. Gun control doesn’t cost much. America has another abiding challenge – the explosive catastrophe of urban poverty – that also goes unmet. The City Observatory, an urban policy think tank in Portland, Oregon, reports that the number of high-poverty urban neighborhoods in the nation’s 51 largest cities tripled – to 3,100 – be-

tween 1970 and 2010. The number of poor persons living in those areas doubled over those years. The poor are more isolated and concentrated than ever. African Americans and Hispanics suffer the highest rates of poverty – and are the most isolated into separate and unequal neighborhoods. Twenty percent of U.S. children lived in poverty by end of 2013; poverty among African-American children was nearly twice that (38 percent). To deal with our impoverished neighborhoods, it isn’t enough to get rid of the guns. The public squalor of our inner cities has to be addressed: schools modernized, affordable housing built, mass transit supplied, available jobs created. Dealing with entrenched poverty costs real money, but less than we spend on the police, jails, drugs, alcoholism, and chronic illness – the dysfunction that comes from poverty. Today’s politicians don’t want to spend political capital on guns or fiscal capital on poverty. They’d rather pay more on the back end from failing to act than risk the upfront political and economic costs of dealing with the problems. So the war on guns is lost; the war on poverty abandoned. And the hopes of millions are dashed by that failure. In the circus of the current presidential campaign, these are two fundamental challenges that ought to be at the center of our debate.

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District Chronicles | Jan. 14 - Jan. 20, 2016 | 7

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(BPT) – It’s everywhere – inside as well as outside your home. As digital device usage increases, you’re exposed to more and more of it without realizing how it may affect your vision in the future. We’re talking about blue light. In its natural form, your body uses blue light from the sun to regulate your natural sleep and wake cycles. This natural light also helps boost alertness, heighten reaction times and elevate moods. However, we use our eyes much differently than prior generations because we now use a number of artificial sources of blue light including digital screens, electronic devices and LED lighting. The evolution in digital screen technology has advanced dramatically over the years, and many of today’s electronic devices use LED back-light technology to help enhance screen brightness and clarity. These LEDs emit very strong blue light waves. Because of the widespread use and increasing popularity of these devices, we are now exposed to more sources of blue light for longer periods of time. Studies suggest 60 percent of people spend

more than six hours a day in front of a digital device. The flickering of this artificial blue light creates a glare that can reduce visual contrast, affecting sharpness and clarity. That in turn could contribute to eyestrain, headaches, physical and mental fatigue due to increasing amounts of time sitting in front of a computer screen or other electronic device. Studies show this high-energy, blue-violet light has been found to cause significant damage to retinal cells, and is a risk factor for the onset of age-related macular degeneration, a deterioration of the part of the retina responsible for sharp, central vision. Our eyes’ natural filters do not provide sufficient protection against blue light rays from the sun, let alone the blue light emanating from these devices, or from blue light emitted from fluorescent-light tubes. Mother Nature arms us with “internal sunglasses” made up of macular pigment. This pigment, which is comprised of zeaxanthin (zee-uh-zan-thin) and lutein at a ratio of 2:1, is found in the center of the macula (fovea). This pig-

ment absorbs harmful blue light that can affect eye health. These “sunglasses” protect the rods and cones needed for central as well as peripheral vision. However, if this macular pigment isn’t at optimal density, it will allow more blue light to damage these rods and cones, negatively affecting not just what you see, but how you see. Zeaxanthin and lutein aren’t produced by the body; they must be ingested in order to ensure optimal macular pigment density. Zeaxanthin can be found in foods like corn, wolf berries and peppers. Lutein is found in foods like spinach and kale. Since the average American diet is scarce in zeaxanthin, supplementing this antioxidant is key. Vitamins for macular health, like those made by EyePromise, can be of big benefit. Vision becomes even more precious as we age, since the loss of independence a very real threat to aging Americans. Reduce your risk of harmful effects of blue light to your vision by increasing the density of your “internal sunglasses.”

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In the Neighborhood

Metro Briefs: Notable news in and around Washington Montgomery County Montgomery College to help students complete Federal Student Aid application

Prince George’s New legislation doubles fines for littering in Prince George’s County

Families can get FAFSA assistance on February 11 and 21.

arship. Students 23 years old or younger should attend the events with a parent or guardian. Families should bring copies of their completed IRS 1040 tax form, W-2 form or other 2015 income and benefits information to assist with the completion of the FAFSA form. Students 24 years and older may attend alone and bring their own tax return, W-2 form and other 2015 income and benefits information. The snow date for the Germantown event is Feb. 18, same time and location, and the snow date for the Takoma Park/Silver Spring event is Feb. 28, same time and location. Germantown Campus has parking available in parking lots erty standards in our county. The legislation reads: “Litter and the accumulation of litter harms property values and the quality of life in our neighborhoods. We must hold those who willfully choose to do damage to the beauty of our county accountable for their actions. CB-70-2015 ensures enforcement and penalties for littering, prohibits the accumulation or deposit of litter. provides for action upon noncompliance and provides for civil monetary fines and injunctive relief.

A, B and C. At Takoma Park/Silver Spring, parking is available in the Montgomery College West Garage, on Fenton and King Streets. That campus is also accessible by public transportation. For general information about College Goal Maryland, registration to attend the event, and a complete listing of documents to bring, visit www.CollegeGoalMaryland.org. To learn more about College Goal Maryland at Montgomery College, contact Alexandra Gonzalez at alexandra.gonzalez@montgomerycollege.edu for the Germantown event or Wendy Maldonado, at wendy.maldonado@montgomerycollege.edu for the Takoma Park/ Silver Spring event.

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Prince George’s County Council Bill 70-2015, legislation doubling the fine for litter to $1000 per violation, has become law. District 9, lead proposer of the legislation, says CB-70 sends a strong message that there is zero tolerance for litter or poor prop-

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ollege-bound students and their families can get professional assistance filling out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) form at two events at Montgomery College campuses. The first event takes place Feb. 11, from 4-7 p.m. at the Germantown Campus in the Bioscience Education Center located at 20200 Observation Drive, in Germantown. The second will take place Feb. 21 from 2-4 p.m. at the Takoma Park/Silver Spring Campus in the Charlene R. Nunley Student Services Center, 7625 Fenton Street in Silver Spring. The events are part of the College’s initiatives to assist families as they complete the FAFSA – the form required by colleges and universities to qualify for scholarships, grants and loans. The events are free and open to the public, and Spanish interpreters will be available. Current college students who are renewing or filling out the FAFSA form for the first time are also welcomed. Students and families will meet with financial aid professionals and use the Montgomery College computer labs to submit their FAFSA form online. Information will be available about Maryland state grants and scholarships. Students can also enter to win a $500 schol-

Call 202-806-9401 to advertise in the District Chronicles. districtchronicles.com District Chronicles | Jan. 14 - Jan. 20, 2016 | 11

In the Neighborhood

Metro Briefs: Notable news in and around Washington Montgomery County

Ride On service change to begin Sunday, January 10

after 8 p.m.; provide Saturday service from 8:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. and eliminate Sunday service.

Routes 14 and 45: As a result of the change in Montgomery County Public Schools start times, the schedule for one trip on each route has changed to accommodate students.

Route 83: To help close the County’s significant budget shortfall this fiscal year, service on this route has been reduced as follows: Weekday service remains unchanged; provide Saturday service from 8:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. and eliminate Sunday service.

Route 42: To help close the County’s significant budget shortfall this fiscal year, service on this route has been reduced as follows: Eliminate weekday service

Route 98: To help close the County’s significant budget shortfall this fiscal year, service on this route has been reduced as follows: Eliminate weekday

mymcmedia.org

eginning January 10, Ride On will make schedule changes to 15 bus routes. Most of the changes modify the bus schedule to more accurately reflect the time it takes for a bus to run its route based on traffic and other conditions. The following routes will be changed: 3, 8, 9, 14, 23, 32, 34, 38,

42, 45, 47, 53, 83, 97 and 98. (Click on the route number to view the new timetable.) Details about the major route changes are listed below:

service after 8 p.m.; provide Saturday service from 8:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. and eliminate Sunday service. Also, add one trip to accommodate students as a result of the change in Montgomery County Public

Schools start times. More information about Ride On is available online, sign up for email alerts or follow Ride On on Facebook and Twitter.

Area residents get in on the action at the NBC 4 Health and Fitness Expo

Robert Eubanks/DistrictChronicles

Robert Eubanks/District Chronicles

Robert Eubanks/DistrictChronicles

Robert Eubanks/District Chronicles

12 | Jan. 14 - Jan. 20, 2016 | District Chronicles