The Black Informant

Developer finds success in SanFran market

Michael Johnson: Taking Urban Development to Another Level
thewesternedition.com

When you mention the Fillmore Heritage Center to Michael Johnson, he smiles as he reflects on the development he helped to create. The almost one-year-old $102 million project is a mixed use housing development, which features condominiums, a parking garage, the restaurant 1300 On Fillmore, a jazz music and education non-profit organization (the Jazz Heritage Center), and Yoshi’s new San Francisco location.
This complex is located in the heart of San Francisco’s Western Addition on Fillmore Street.

“The Fillmore Heritage Center has become a legacy project for me and our company,” said Johnson. “It combines a lot of things that are important for community development in African American neighborhoods such as mixed use housing and commercial space.”

The project has helped to signal the rebirth of the Western Addition area, and is the latest urban development project in the city of San Francisco.

“This would not have happened without the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency and the Western Addition community,” continued Johnson. “Everyone believed that if we did not get the project built on that site that it would not happen.”

But it did, after years of project proposals and disappointments. The Fillmore Heritage Center is one of the largest projects developed by an African American developer in California.

Johnson, president and founder of EM Johnson Interest, Inc. has over 20 years of experience in urban real estate development around the country. A native of Philadelphia, Johnson studied architecture at the University of Maryland and then went on to Georgia Tech, where he got a Masters Degree in Real Estate Development.

After graduating from Georgia Tech, Johnson stayed in the Atlanta area where he worked at the Community Design Center of Atlanta, which offered free architecture services for community organizations. He then went into private business with Ron Wilson - a real estate salesman, and Richard Dagenhart - an architect, to form Wilson, Dagenhart, and Johnson, a firm that focused on urban and economic development in minority communities.

“We were together for 11 years and we worked throughout the country in Birmingham, Memphis, Dallas - with most of the focus on urban redevelopment,” says Johnson. “We worked on the Martin Luther King Historical District in Atlanta, which includes Ebenezer Baptist Church. We helped to create what is now a national park.”

After being in Atlanta for a number of years, Johnson wanted a change of pace and in 1989 began looking at various cities to move to. He decided to move to the Bay Area, where he went to work with the Neighborhood Housing Services of America, based in Oakland, which provides funding for other non-profits that develop affordable housing.

He stayed out of development for a few years, but he got back into it in1993, founding EM Johnson Interest, Inc. He would begin working on projects in various states including Oregon, Idaho, and Georgia. He did not enter the San Francisco market until 1998, when he decided to bid on the St. Regis project on Third and Mission Streets, a mixed use, housing, hotel and open space, which would eventually become the Museum of African Diaspora. (more…)

There are a lot of bruthas that can identify with this

Good fathers ‘powerless against vengeful mothers’
By Tom Peterkin

Decent fathers are left powerless to see their estranged children if vengeful mothers are determined to prevent access, a senior judge has admitted.

Lord Justice Ward attacked child access law after presiding over a case that saw a “vicious” mother falsely accuse her ex-husband of sexually abusing their child.

He spoke out after telling the father that there was nothing he could do to help him re-establish contact with his daughter after his ex-wife turned her against him.

The man’s 14-year-old daughter, who cannot been identified, had been influenced by a “drip, drip, drip of venom” from his ex-wife, who wanted to deny him his paternal rights.

[…]

In London’s Civil Appeal Court, Lord Justice Ward said: “The father complains bitterly, passionately, and with every justification, that the law is sterile, impotent and utterly useless.

”But the question is ‘what can this court do?’ The answer is nothing.”

The parents were briefly married in the 1990s and their daughter was a baby when they parted.

Lord Justice Ward said it was “impossible” that the girl could remember being abused and it was obvious it was something she had been told and believed.

In 1997 a judge ruled that allegations of sexual abuse were “wholly unfounded”. (more…)

Another reminder of the seriousness of this disease

An Epidemic Unabated
By: DUNCAN OSBORNE
gaycitynews.com
For Black Gays 24 and Under, 60 Percent Rise in Four Years

Leaning back in a chair, his arms crossed above his head, Justin D. Walker spoke easily about his life. The 24-year-old paused to sip some water and occasionally stood to look at a computer screen displaying slides from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Using data from 33 states, one slide showed that new HIV or AIDS diagnoses among African-American gay and bisexual men aged 13 to 24 went from just under 1,000 cases in 2001 to more than 1,600 in 2005. Walker is one of those statistics. He learned he was positive at 20.

“I know that my future is altered,” he said toward the end of a 90-minute interview. “One of the things that I’ve always wanted to do was have a family. I know that is not impossible, but it will be hard to do.”

New HIV or AIDS diagnoses among white or Latino men who have sex with men in that age group also increased over that time, but the cases among whites hit roughly 600 in 2005 and there were about 500 cases among Latinos in that year.

During that same period, new diagnoses among gay and bisexual men aged 35 to 44 went from over 6,000 to roughly 6,500, cases among 25- to 34-year-olds went from 5,000 to 5,500, and cases among 45- to 54-year-olds went from roughly 2,500 to more than 3,000.

The 13- to 24-year-olds account for just four percent of all male AIDS cases, according to one CDC estimate, but that anyone in that age group is getting infected is shocking.

“It’s a very serious problem when the very young are becoming infected and it’s increasingly so,” said Dr. M. Monica Sweeney, assistant commissioner for the Bureau of HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control in the New York City health department.

City data show that 3,596 13- to 24-year-olds first received an HIV diagnosis from 2001 to 2006. Sixty-six percent, or 2,388 cases, of those diagnoses were in men and, among the men, 68 percent, or 1,633 cases, were gay or bisexual men. Fifty-two percent of all the young men were African-American and 34 percent were Latino.

“These are really horrible statistics,” said Sean R. Cahill, managing director of public policy, research, and community health at the Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC), referring to the city and CDC data. “I think that we’re in the middle of a second AIDS crisis among gay and bi men, especially among black and Latino men.”

Walker said he was infected during a May 2004 sexual encounter with a friend who did not disclose that he was HIV-positive and convinced him to have unsafe sex.

“That was my very first time being exposed to unsafe sex and my first male encounter,” he said. He was diagnosed in August and received an AIDS diagnosis in November of that year. It typically takes eight to ten years to go from becoming HIV-positive to developing AIDS.

Walker said he had sex with women previously and had been sexually assaulted by a man when he was 15, but all of those encounters were with condoms. He had four negative HIV tests, his first was at 17, prior to the positive test.

Walker believes “that all of my friends have the ability to get someone to use a condom,” but that “people that age are not really focused on using a condom.” (more…)

Another man free because of DNA testing

DNA frees man who spent almost 23 years in prison for rape
By JEFF CARLTON, Associated Press Writer

DALLAS - After spending nearly 23 years in prison for a rape he did not commit, Thomas Clifford McGowan on Wednesday heard the words that set him free
“Words cannot express how sorry I am for the last 23 years,” said state District Judge Susan Hawk, moments after overturning his convictions. “I believe you can walk out of here a free man.”

McGowan, 49, won his freedom after a DNA test this month proved what he had always professed: that he did not rape a Dallas-area woman in 1985 and then burglarize her apartment. He was convicted of both crimes in separate trials in 1985 and 1986 and sentenced to life each time. The primary evidence against him turned out to be misidentification by the rape victim.

“I’ve been living a life of a living hell and my nightmare is finally over with,” McGowan said after the hearing. “This is the first day of my life. I’m going to go forward.”

Hawk’s ruling, which now must be affirmed by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, makes McGowan the 17th Dallas man since 2001 to have his conviction cast aside because of DNA testing. That’s the most of any county in the nation, according to the Innocence Project, a New York-based legal center that specializes in overturning wrongful convictions.

Overall, 31 people have been formally exonerated through DNA testing in Texas, also a national high. That does not include McGowan and at least two others whose exonerations will not become official until Gov. Rick Perry grants pardons or the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals issues its rulings.

[…]

McGowan’s wrongful imprisonment began in May 1985 when a Richardson woman returned home and came upon a burglar in her apartment. The man bound her hands with his belt, raped her at knifepoint and then loaded his car with several items stolen from her apartment, according to court documents.

Police eventually presented the woman with a photo array of seven men. She picked out McGowan’s photo, saying she “thought” he was the attacker. But police told her she had to be certain and “couldn’t just think it was him,” she testified in court. It was then that she said McGowan was “definitely” the attacker, according to court documents.

Just a few words from a police officer can significantly influence whether a witness identifies the wrong person, Innocence Project Co-Director Barry Scheck said.

“It’s not that the police officer involved in this matter was intentionally doing anything wrong. He wasn’t,” Scheck said. “That kind of a forced choice response … is very, very damaging.” (more…)