Valerie Jarrett

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.

Stanley O. Williford  |   OW Editor
Sep 20 2012

Valerie Jarrett drops by two other campaign offices

Senior Democratic Strategist Valerie Jarrett swooped into town on a hot summer’s Friday last week to meet with prominent Latino leaders and volunteers behind the Obama-Biden campaign at the Organizing for America Southeast Los Angeles office, as well as volunteers at offices on Crenshaw Boulevard and in Santa Monica.

One report estimated that Obama may garner as much as 68 to70 percent of the Latino vote, with Mitt Romney taking about 25 percent.

Sep 13 2012

They note an assault on voting rights

CHARLOTTE, N.C.—During a roundtable briefing with Black journalists at the Charlotte Convention Center just before President Barack Obama accepted his party’s nomination for president, his campaign said there is a sense of urgency for African Americans to get out and vote.

Obama senior adviser Valerie Jarrett told the roundtable of journalists that the assault on voting rights should motivate Blacks to get to the polls in November.

Mar 17 2011

Gender equity is everybody’s business

March is Women’s History Month, and the White House Council on Women and Girls, led by Valerie Jarrett, commemorated it by releasing a report on the status of women. According to the report, we’ve come a long way, sisters, but we’ve still got a long way to go. Despite the fact that we out-enroll men in college, we under-earn them in the workplace. There are so many phenomenal women accomplishing amazing things, and at the same time there are so many women whose economic attainment is constrained by gender.

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.