Greene County Democrat

Month: June 2016

  • Greenetrack sets up guarantee fund to assist Greene County Health System with payroll

    Greenetrack

    Pictured L to R: Greenetrack Boardmember Toice Goodson, Sr., Greenetrack
     CEO Luther ‘Nat’ Winn, Jr., GCHS boardmember John Zippert,  GCHS
    boardmember Shirley Isaac  and Greenetrack Boardmember Jimmy Pasteur

    At a press conference on Friday morning at Greenetrack, Greenetrack CEO, Luther ‘Nat’ Winn Jr. and several board members presented the Greene County Health System (GCHS) with two checks totaling $150,000. These funds will be used to establish a guarantee fund in the Merchants and Farmers Bank to insure that the GCHS can meet its bi-weekly payroll, even when payments from Medicaid, Medicare and other health payers are delayed. The GCHS has 200 full and part-time employees.

    The Greene County Health System, which includes the Hospital, Residential Care Center (nursing home) Physicians Clinic, Home Health Services, Rehabilitation Services and other health care benefits was represented at the presentation by Board members – Shirley Isaac and John Zippert. GCHS board members thanked the officials of Greenetrack for their concern and support.
    In early April, according to Elmore Patterson, GCHS CEO, the health system experienced some difficulties in meeting a payroll because its Medicaid payments were delayed until later in the month. GCHS board members and Medicaid itself made loans and advances to assure that the payroll was met.
    Luther Winn Jr., CEO of Greenetrack learned of these problems and agreed to assist by placing funds in a guarantee account to assure that the payroll could be met on a timely basis.
    Luther Winn, Jr., CEO of Greenetrack and a member of the Greene County Industrial Authority, felt compelled to step in and assist.  “Greenetrack is committed to the Greene County community. As in the past, we have done what we could to improve the quality of life for every resident here,” said Winn, “and we cannot afford to lose our hospital.”  Winn went on to say that the Industrial Authority actively seeks new businesses for the area and without a hospital, he fears that businesses definitely will not consider coming to Greene County.
    Winn informed the GCHS that Greenetrack was receiving $75,641.07, mostly in coins, back from the State of Alabama, in connection with litigation concerning the first raid on Greenetrack in 2010. These funds were awarded back to Greenetrack by Special Circuit Judge Houston Brown, in a summary judgment on February 3, 2016, in a hearing in Greene County. The case also involves over 800 electronic bingo machines seized by the state in the same raid.
    The coins were in Greenetrack’s vault but the State of Alabama, who seized them, could not prove that these funds were derived from illegal gambling activities and thus agreed to return them.
    Greenetrack’s Board of Directors agreed to match the State’s funds with an additional $75,000 to create a $150,000 guarantee collateral fund in Merchant and Farmers Bank to back-up the GCHS’s payroll account. If the GCHS has to draw upon this account to support payroll, it will have to replace the funds before drawing on the account again. “This will insure that the GCHS’s employees will never miss a paycheck,” said Winn.
    Shirley Isaac of Forkland and GCHS Board member said  “ We are grateful to Mr. Winn and Greenetrack for their support and confidence in the hospital, nursing home and other services. This will surely help us to meet our responsibilities to our hardworking and dedicated staff.”
    John Zippert, another GCHS Board member said, “ We appreciate what Mr. Winn and Greenetrack have done to help the GCHS but it is up to us as citizens of Greene County to do our part and use the facilities, health personnel and services available at the hospital, residential care center and physicians clinic.”
    “We have 20 beds in the hospital, 70 beds in the nursing home, 3 doctors and 2 nurse practitioners at the clinic, a full lab, new X-ray machine, women’s health center with mammography, physical, occupational and speech therapy services, home health services and many other health services at our facilities. There is no reason to go to Tuscaloosa, Demopolis or elsewhere for medical and health services unless you are referred by GCHS. If we don’t use our facilities and staff, we will surely lose them,” said Zippert.
    Elmore Patterson, GCHS CEO said, “We welcome this support from Greenetrack. We hope that we will also secure some regular monthly funding from Sheriff Benison’s bingo rules which will help us meet the costs for serving so many people in the county who cannot afford healthcare and those with Medicare and Medicaid whose reimbursements do not meet the full cost of providing care.”

  • Black women become most educated group in US

    By: Simon Osborne

    black-women

    Black woman college graduate

    Black women are now the most educated group in US, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

    Between 2009 and 2010, black women earned 68 per cent of associate’s degrees, 66 per cent of bachelor’s degrees, 71 per cent of master’s degrees and 65 per cent of all doctorate degrees awarded to black students.

    The percentage of black students attending college has increased from 10 per cent to 15 per cent from 1976 to 2012, while the percentage of white students fell from 84 to 60 per cent.

    By both race and gender, a higher percentage of black women (9.7 per cent) is enrolled in college than any other group, including Asian women (8.7 per cent), white women (7.1 per cent) and white men (6.1 per cent).

    However, a recent study found black women make up just 8 per cent of private sector jobs and 1.5 per cent of leadership roles.

    When it comes to the public sector, a quarter of state legislators are women, but less than a quarter of those are women of colour.

    Catalyst found in 2014 that Asian, black, and Hispanic women make up 17 per cent of workers in S&P 500 companies, but fewer than four per cent of executive officials and managers.

    The same groups also make up fewer than three per cent of Fortune 500 company board directors.

  • National, State and Local policy makers headed for Black Political Convention in Gary

    By Hazel Trice Edney 

     

    Mayor Johnny Ford of Tuskegee and Mayor of Gary Indiana,

    Karen Freeman-Wilson

     

     

    (TriceEdneyWire.com) – As the U. S. presidential candidates prepare for national conventions and congressional campaigns remain in full throttle, the National Policy Alliance, a coalition of 16,000 Black elected and appointed officials and more than a million Black policy makers has organized a National Black Political Convention to be held June 9-12 at the Genesis Convention Center in Gary, Ind.

    The event is a follow up to a historic gathering convened in 1972 by then Gary Mayor Richard Hatcher.

    “The Gary Convention was perhaps the single most important political event for Black America held during the last century,” Tuskegee, Alabama Mayor Johnny Ford said in an interview this week. “With that Gary Convention came the inspiration and motivation that led to the election of more Black elected officials than any time since reconstruction.”

    Although he is founding co-chair of the National Policy Alliance, Ford says there will be no top leader. Other convention convenors are former Gary Mayor Richard Hatcher, original convenor in 1972; current Gary Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson; and Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, the son of poet and activist Amiri Baraka, an original convenor in 1972.

     

    According to NPA Executive Director Linda Haithcox, speakers will include Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan; Chicago Congressman Danny K. Davis (D-Ill.); Dr. Lezli Baskerville, president/CEO, National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education; NAACP Senior Vice President Hilary Shelton; Dr. E. Faye Williams, National Chair of the National Congress of Black Women; Flint, Michigan Mayor Karen Weaver; and Spencer Overton, president/CEO of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

    “We have no one leader. We don’t have a Martin Luther King. We don’t have a Malcolm. We have diversified if you will, whereby all of us have leadership roles,” Ford said.

     

    Some national leaders, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr., who had originally planned to attend, had to cancel due to Friday’s memorial services for boxing champion Muhammad Ali, organizers said.

     

    The main purpose of the gathering will be to establish a Black agenda that will result in equality and justice, Ford said.

    “The challenges facing the African-American community today are even greater than they were 44 years ago,” Ford said. “This convention is being held now because, If not now, when? If not us, who?”

    Ford listed issues including “high unemployment, crime in our communities, the need for better education, quality and affordable and accessible health care, the need to develop our infrastructures in the Black community” as being key to a Black agenda.

    These are issues being dealt with every day by state and local officials. “So, that’s why we who are closest to the people are providing the leadership.”

    Ford acknowledged that while the issues are similar to 1972, the modes of communication are different. For example, there was no Internet back then. This gathering will take full advantage of the new media, he said.

    “While this convention is not as well known or will be as big as the one that took place 44 years ago where more than 10,000 delegates came together and adopted a call for action, the African-American community in this country and even internationally will be able to be a part of this convention by [live] streaming – thanks to the Internet.”

    Regardless of who shows up, Ford says the significance of going back to Gary 44 years later is powerful because of the historic impact the convention made then.

    “Gary precedes glory,” he said. “Gary is a significant and historic return to a place that is sacred in the sense that it was at Gary that we shaped a national agenda. It will be at Gary that we will return to shape a 2016 national agenda.”

    Ford said he does not expect everyone to agree on everything. But where there is agreement will come the Black agenda, he said. “And that will be the agenda that we will present to the national Democratic Party, the national Republican Party and the nation and the world.”

     

    The Black agenda “will be revisited in the fall” during national, state and local elections, Haithcox says. “This agenda will be something that can be utilized in every state, county and city.”

  • Obama had some strong words for a gun-store owner who confronted him at a town-hall event in Indiana

    By Jeremy Berke, Business Insider

     

    President Obama at PBS Town Hall Meeting

    President Obama addresses PBS Town Hall Meeting

     

    President Barack Obama stuck around after a PBS Newshour town hall in Elkhart, Indiana, on Wednesday to answer a few questions.

    He had some strong words for a gun-store owner who asked him why he and Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential frontrunner, want to supposedly restrict and control the use of guns for the “good guys.”

    “First of all, the notion that I or Hillary or Democrats or whoever you want to choose are hell-bent on taking away folks’ guns is just not true,” Obama said. “And I don’t care how many times the NRA says it.”

    Obama then claimed there have actually been more guns sold since he has been president than any time in US history. And it’s true: Gun sales — based on the number of FBI criminal-background checks — increased by 65% over the period between 2008 and 2013, according to the Annenberg Public Policy Center.

    Obama continued: I just came from a meeting today in the Situation Room in which I got people who we know have been on ISIL Web sites, living here in the United States, U.S. citizens, and we’re allowed to put them on the no-fly list when it comes to airlines, but because of the National Rifle Association, I cannot prohibit those people from buying a gun.

    This is somebody who is a known ISIL sympathizer. And if he wants to walk in to a gun store or a gun show right now and buy as much — as many weapons and ammo as he can, nothing’s prohibiting him from doing that, even though the FBI knows who that person is.

    “So, sir, I just have to say, respectfully, that there is a way for us to have common sense gun laws,” Obama said. “… but the only way we’re going to do that is if we don’t have a situation in which anything that is proposed is viewed as some tyrannical destruction of the Second Amendment.”

  • Obama commutes 348 prison sentences, the most of any President in recent history

     prison

    Prison Cells

    Written By NewsOne Staff

              Underscoring his calls for criminal justice reform, President Barack Obama on Friday commuted the prison sentences of 42 people who were locked up as non-violent drug offenders.

    The harsh prison terms were doled out under “outdated and unduly harsh sentencing laws,” the White House said in a statement. Most were “small-time drug dealers who received long sentences under a code shaped by the government’s war on drugs,” the report says:

    Some were serving life sentences. Held in various prisons across the country, they will be released between October 1, 2016 and June 3, 2018.

    Obama has now commuted sentences for 348 people, more than the total amount issued by the previous seven presidents combined.

    Obama has called for legislation to reduce sentences and provide alternative punishments for small-time offenders. “There remain thousands of men and women in federal prison serving sentences longer than necessary, often due to overly harsh mandatory minimum sentences,” the White House said.

    An estimated 2.2 million people are locked away behind bars in the United States, including “the mentally ill and drug addicts,” who are often people of color.

     

     

  • Ali’s stance on Vietnam War emboldened MLK to oppose conflict

    By George E. Curry Editor-in-Chief

    EmergeNewsOnline.com

     

    tumblr_mzpdgf0ho31ren1y6o1_1280

    Ali and King

    Muhammad Ali boxing

    Ali boxing on jump

     

    WASHINGTON – Muhammad Ali’s decision to risk going to jail by opposing the Vietnam War provided Dr. Martin Luther King with the strength to come out against the war publicly for the first time, according to the board chairman of King’s old organization.

    Bernard Lafayette, a longtime Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) field organizer and current board chairman, said in an interview with EmergeNewsOnline.com: “He was the reason Martin Luther King had the courage to come out and take a stand against the war, even though Martin Luther King’s own board was not in favor of it.”

    He added, “I don’t remember any exact quotes, but Muhammad Ali is the one that pushed Martin Luther King to take a stand.”

    Ali, who was a global icon in and out of the boxing ring, died June 3 in a hospital in Scottsdale, Ariz., where he had been admitted with respiratory problems. He was 74 years old. A private funeral service will be held Thursday in his hometown of Louisville, Ky. followed by a public memorial on Friday.

    On April 28, 1967, at the height of the Vietnam War, Muhammad Ali refused to be drafted into the U.S. Army, citing religious reasons. He said, “I ain’t got no quarrel with those Vietcong.” Ali, who had converted to Islam three years earlier and changed his name from Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr. to Muhammad Ali, was immediately stripped of his heavyweight championship title.

    He was convicted of draft evasion on June 20, 1967, sentenced to five years in prison, fined $10,000 and banned from boxing for three years. He remained free while his case worked its way through the appeals process.  On June 28, 1971, a unanimous Supreme Court overturned his conviction, granting him conscious objector status.

    Ali’s standoff with the federal government captured the attention of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the preeminent civil rights leader of that period.

    Like Ali, he took a stand against the Vietnam War, a position that was opposed by many of his fellow civil rights warriors, including NAACP Executive Director Roy Wilkins and National Urban League President Whitney Young, Jr. On April 30, 1967 – just two days after Ali refused to take a step forward to be inducted into the Army – King gave a major address against the war at Riverside Church in New York City.

    “I speak out against this war, not in anger, but with anxiety and sorrow in my heart, and, above all, with a passionate desire to see our beloved country stand as the moral example of the world,” King said. “I speak out against this war because I am disappointed with America. And there can be no great disappointment where there is not great love. I am disappointed with our failure to deal positively and forthrightly with the triple evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism. We are presently moving down a dead-end road that can lead to national disaster. America has strayed to the far country of racism and militarism.”

    While then-president Lyndon B. Johnson objected to King’s opposition to the war, the nation’s first African American president praised Ali for his unpopular stand. In a statement, President and Mrs. Obama said, “Muhammad Ali shook up the world. And the world is better for it. We are all better for it.”

    They explained, “He stood with King and Mandela; stood up when it was hard; spoke out when others wouldn’t. His fight outside the ring would cost him his title and his public standing. It would earn him enemies on the left and the right, make him reviled, and nearly send him to jail. But Ali stood his ground. And his victory helped us get used to the America we recognize today.”

    The former heavyweight champion occupied a special place in Black America. Like Joe Lewis had instilled mass pride in an earlier generation, he did the same for the succeeding generation.

    The Louisville, Ky. native won a gold medal at the 1960 Olympics in Rome and turned pro later that year. On Feb. 25, 1964, Ali scored an upset knockout over Sonny Liston in the sixth round, becoming heavyweight champion. In addition to predicting the round his opponent would fall, Ali provided the most colorful quotes of any boxer before or afterward.

    “The Louisville Lip,” as he was sometimes known, was famous for saying, “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee – his hands can’t hit what his eyes can’t see.”

    In case you didn’t get the point, he said, “I done something new for this fight. I wrestled with an alligator. I tussled with a whale. I handcuffed lightening. I thrown thunder in jail. Only last week I murdered a rock, injured a stone, hospitalized a brick. I’m, so mean I make medicine sick.”

    Not all of his lines were original, but that did not seem to matter. For example, he often said, “I’m so fast that last night I turned off the light switch in my hotel room and got into bed before the room was dark.” A variation of that quote is widely attributed to Negro League baseball great Josh Gibson describing Cool Papa Bell. But Ali could get away with claiming it.

    After being banned from boxing, Ali returned to the ring against Jerry Quarry in Atlanta on Oct. 26, 1970. Ali knocked him out in the third round.

    Many of Ali’s fights had catchy titles, most of them supplied by him. His 1971 fight against Joe Frazier was billed as the “Fight of the Century.” He defeated George Foreman in the “Rumble in the Jungle” in Kinshasa, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), knocking out Foreman in the eighth round. After splitting two bouts with Joe Frazier, Ali defeated him in 14 rounds in the “Thrilla in Manila.”

    Ali retired in 1981 with a 56-5 record and the only person to hold the heavyweight championship three times. In 1984, he was diagnosed with Parkinson disease.

    “Later, as his physical powers ebbed, he became an even more powerful force for peace and reconciliation around the world,” Obama said of Ali. “We saw a man who said he was so mean he’d make medicine sick reveal a soft spot, visiting children with illness and disability around the world, telling them they, too, could become the greatest. We watched a hero light a torch, and fight his greatest fight of all on the world stage once again; a battle against the disease that ravaged his body, but couldn’t take the spark from his eyes.”

    Jesse L. Jackson, founder and president of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, said of Ali, “He sacrificed the heart of his career and money and glory for his religious beliefs about a war he thought unnecessary and unjust…He was a champion in the ring, but, more than that, a hero beyond the ring. When champions win, people carry them off the field on their shoulders. When heroes win, people ride on their shoulders. We rode on Muhammad Ali’s shoulders.”

    Another civil rights leader, Marc H. Morial, president and CEO of the National Urban League, said: “I believe Muhammad Ali was the greatest athlete of the 20th century. Whether he was the greatest boxer in history may be debated for generations. But none has had a greater impact on American culture and social justice.”

    On Twitter, Rev. Al Sharpton, president and founder of the National Action Network, said Ali “was and always will be the greatest.” Sharpton said, “We should all strive to embody the virtues he possessed.”

    Even Ali’s former opponents had nothing but praise for him. “It’s like a part of me just passed w/him,” George Foreman Tweeted. “It’s hard for me to think about being n a world without Muhammad Ali being alive.”

     

  • CBC members worry proposed FCC rule could hurt Black media companies

    By Lauren Victoria Burke (NNPA News Wire Contributor)

    Congresswoman Yvette Clarke (D-NY)Congresswoman Yvette Clarke (D-NY)

                In an unpredictable, disruptive media environment featuring new ways for consumers to receive video content over Wi-Fi, apps and live streaming, established media companies are bracing for a future driven by big tech and consumer choice with new profit models.

    It happened in the newspaper industry. It happened in the music industry. It happened in the book publishing industry. And now it’s happening slowly, but surely in broadcasting as a host of new entrepreneurs are set to arrive on an increasingly competitive scene.

    In February, Tom Wheeler, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), moved to free consumers, who are now collectively paying $20 billion every year, from buying or renting a set-top box for cable TV. The FCC wants to “unlock the box” and allow others to provide video content such as Google and Apple.

    The move would be a shakeup of the status quo. The technology around video-on-demand is clearly changing as seen in companies such as YouTube, Hulu, TiVo, Kweli.tv, Netflix and Ustream. On April 15, President Obama signed an executive order backing Wheeler’s efforts to open the cable set top box.

    “The cost of cable set-top boxes has risen 185 percent while the cost of computers, televisions and mobile phones has dropped by 90 percent,” FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said on the issue.

    Last week on Capitol Hill, Congressional Black Caucus Chair G.K. Butterfield and Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.) announced a new Congressional Caucus on Multicultural Media that will “focus on the state of diversity and inclusion in the media and in the telecommunications industry.”

    Clarke said that the potential harm that the proposed FCC rule could do to multicultural media companies is very real. She suggested delaying action on the proposed rule, “until the Congressional Research Service (CRS) and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) complete their prospective studies on the impact on multicultural media under this proposed rule.”

    Clarke and Butterfield were joined by TV One CEO Al Liggins and BET Networks Executive Debra Lee at the press event announcing the new caucus. Both Clarke and Butterfield serve on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

    “While we must be open to the rising cultural expectations to make programs available on-demand or through streaming services, we also have to balance these interests with the assurance that we are not pitting the few diverse programmers out there against each other or allowing some to pick winners and losers,” Butterfield said.

    The phrase, “few diverse programmers” is an understatement. African Americans own less than 1 percent of all TV properties and less than 2 percent of radio as reported by Pew Research.

    “We think that the marketplace is robust enough as it is and [the proposed FCC rule] is unnecessary,” said Liggins. “We believe competition should be there, but we believe it should happen in an app form which protects all the rights and the license agreements that we’ve made with the existing paid TV providers.”

    Butterfield expressed concerns that the FCC’s plan to “unlock the box” might risk the progress in diverse programming that television audiences have seen in recent years. Despite that progress, minority-owned media companies represent a minuscule portion of all broadcast media and many Black media company owners are pushing for the FCC change, saying that the status quo has done little to affect the ownership disparity.

    On a conference call an hour after Reps. Clarke and Butterfield announced the new caucus, Peggy Dodson, the CEO of the Urban Broadcasting Company offered an alternative view and supported the FCC “unlocking the box.”

    “We’re about creating a producing urban content, but that content has to be searchable, it has to be found and it has to be monetized,” Dodson said. “The genie is out of the box. The hourglass has been turned over. I think what is being missed between Comcast and Time Warner fighting with Google and thinking that Google is going to take over, is the minority-owned producers and content creators. We’re being swept under the rug. We need diversity. We do not own anything.”

    Dodson continued: “Opening the box is inevitable. It is the answer. It’s happening. We can’t stop it. People are choosing what platforms they want to see programing on and how they want to see it and when they want to see it. Everyone can make money.”

    Dodson said that she’s not trying to put TV One or anyone else out of business. “That is not my goal. My goal is to have the opportunity to monetize and have people see the content on a platform that is searchable and that can be monetized,” Dodson added.

    Clifford Franklin, CEO of GFNTV, said that he was shocked to hear the comments from BET and TV One. “It’s shocking to me to see the comments from BET and TV One because they know this has been a very anti-competitive situation that we’re in. At the end of the day we have to disrupt this industry,” Franklin told reporters.

    “We’ve been inundated with baboonery and thugs and anti-social behavior and some of that has come from our urban channels,” Franklin added. “We need a lot more diversity of thought from our content creators. They have pretty much been shut out of the game.”

     

     

  • Harvard grad delivers powerfully poetic speech on overcoming injustice

    Taryn Finley, Black Voices Associate Editor, The Huffington Post

     

    Donovan Livingston

    Donovan Livingston

     

     

    A recent Harvard graduate just gave a poetic speech that every student and teacher needs to hear.

    In his poem entitled “Lift Off,” Donovan Livingston stepped up to the mic at his Harvard Graduate School of Education convocation on Wednesday to speak about the trials and tribulations black people have endured, especially in the education system.

    He began with a nearly two-century-old quote from Horace Mann in which he called education “a great equalizer.” At the time, Mann said black people would be lynched for even attempting to read.

    “For generations we have known of knowledge’s infinite power,” Livingston continued. “Yet somehow, we’ve never questioned the keeper of the keys —the guardians of information.”

    Throughout his rousing poem, he spoke of the inequalities in the education system that has either held many black people back or used them as mere tokens.

    Livingston, who described his passion as going beyond any curriculum, also spoke about finding his light.

    “I am the strange fruit that grew too ripe for the poplar tree,” he declared. “I am a DREAM Act, dream deferred incarnate. I am a movement — an amalgam of memories America would care to forget my past, alone won’t allow me to sit still. So my body, like the mind, cannot be contained.”

    Livingston went on to implore that his fellow graduates — and professors — help free their students rather than to speak “over the rustling of our chains.” He used his seventh grade teacher, who helped him find his voice, as an example. The graduate said he sees “the same twinkle that guided Harriet to freedom” in his students’ eyes. He then urged educators to look beyond their students’ mischief and to instead help them realize their potential:

    “Education is no equalizer —
    Rather, it is the sleep that precedes the American Dream.
    So wake up — wake up! Lift your voices
    Until you’ve patched every hole in a child’s broken sky.
    Wake up every child so they know of their celestial potential.
    I’ve been a black hole in the classroom for far too long;
    Absorbing everything, without allowing my light escape.
    But those days are done. I belong among the stars.
    And so do you. And so do they.
    Together, we can inspire galaxies of greatness
    For generations to come.
    No, sky is not the limit. It is only the beginning.
    Lift off.”

    Livingston, who will be attending the University of North Carolina in the fall for his Ph.D., tweeted the day after he gave his speech  how important it was for him to overcome the roadblocks on his journey to Harvard and share his message.

  • Congressional art contest winner depicts police brutality and protests

    By Lauren Victoria Burke (NNPA News Wire Contributor)

    CBC art competition winnerCBC art contest winner

                Cardinal Ritter College Prep High School Senior David Pulphus won this year’s congressional art competition with a painting called “Untitled #1.” The first place winner is from Congressman Lacy Clay’s district (D-Mo.)

    Congressional art competition entitled, “An Artistic Discovery,” features a nationwide art contest coordinated by members of the U.S. House of Representatives. The contest recognizes the talents of high school students across America. Over 200 Members of Congress and over 50,000 high schools students have taken part in the popular and competitive program.

    Each year, members of Congress put out a call for students to compete in the contest and the resulting work is displayed on the white walls of a long tunnel that connects House Office Buildings to the U.S. Capitol. The work is seen by members of Congress, staffers, lobbyists and the thousands of visitors to the U.S. Capitol complex each year.

    Inadvertently, the annual art contest has become a reflection of what’s on the minds of young people in America.

    Pulphus’ work is an acrylic painting featuring a downtown street scene with the St. Louis’ iconic arch displayed in the background and three police officers with animal heads, two with guns in hand, and a large group of marchers approaching moving toward the police. The lead marcher carries a sign that says the word “history.” Pulphus’ painting includes several signs, one of which says “Racism Kills,” and another reading “Stop Killing.” On the right you can see man being crucified wearing a graduation cap holding the scales of justice in his hands.

    Pulphus,’ “visually stunning acrylic painting on canvas entitled, “Untitled #1” will be displayed at the U.S. Capitol Complex. Pulphus will travel to Washington, DC, courtesy of Southwest Airlines, to unveil his winning entry. The painting portrays a colorful landscape of symbolic characters representing social injustice, the tragic events in Ferguson, Missouri and the lingering elements of inequality in modern American society,” read a May 6, release from Rep. Clay’s office.

    Rep. Clay represents greater St. Louis and Ferguson, Mo., where in August 2014, Black teenager Michael Brown, Jr., was shot and killed by Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson.

    During an interview with the NNPA News Wire, Rep. Clay was asked about Pulphus’ work. The Congressman will greet the artist in Washington, D.C. and be present with Pulphus,’ when the painting is presented for display in the U.S. Capitol complex.

    “I think that the art work selected for this year — winner of the Congressional art competition has to be the most creative expression that I’ve witnessed over the last 16 years,” Rep. Clay said between votes on the House floor.” I’m very proud of the young man who is the artist responsible for this work he depicts the St. Louis community in the way he envisions it. I respect that and I’m so glad that the judges picked his work number one as the winner.”

    Pulphus’ work will travel to Washington, D.C. in a few weeks where he will attend a reception for all of the winners around the country. This year’s first place winner will receive a scholarship, according to Rep. Clay’s office.

    The contest is in its 32nd year and this is the 16th year that Congressman Clay has conducted the competition in Missouri’s first Congressional District. Terri Sewell, 7th District Alabama Congresswoman also conducts the art competition in her district which includes Greene and many counties in the Alabama Black Belt.

     

  • Jimmy Carter, seeing resurgence of racism in Trump campaign , plans Baptist Conference for Unity

    By LAURIE GOODSTEIN, New York Times

     Jimmy Carter

    Former President Jimmy Carter, who has long put religion and racial reconciliation at the center of his life, is on a mission to heal a racial divide among Baptists and help the country soothe rifts that he believes are getting worse.

    In an interview on Monday, Mr. Carter spoke of a resurgence of open racism, saying, “I don’t feel good, except for one thing: I think the country has been reawakened the last two or three years to the fact that we haven’t resolved the race issue adequately.”

    He said that Republican animosity toward President Obama had “a heavy racial overtone” and that Donald J. Trump’s surprisingly successful campaign for president had “tapped a waiting reservoir there of inherent racism.”

    Mr. Carter conducted telephone interviews to call attention to a summit meeting he plans to hold in Atlanta this fall to bring together white, black, Hispanic and Asian Baptists to work on issues of race and social inequality. Mr. Carter began the effort, called the New Baptist Covenant, in 2007, but it has taken root in only a few cities. The initiative is expanding to enlist Baptist congregations across the country to unite across racial lines.

    Mr. Carter, 91, began treatment last year for cancer that had started in his liver and spread to his brain. He announced in December that doctors had found him free of cancer but that he was still receiving treatments for metastatic melanoma. On Monday, he said he was feeling well.

    Mr. Carter, a Democrat who was the 39th president, grew up on a farm in Plains, Ga., where many of his friends were the black children of neighboring farmhands. He was raised a Southern Baptist and was the first United States president to call himself a born-again Christian, bringing national attention to the evangelical movement.

    Mr. Carter said the election of Mr. Obama was a hopeful sign, but he added, “I think there’s a heavy reaction among some of the racially conscious Republicans against an African-American being president.”

    He said recent reports showing high unemployment and incarceration rates among black people, “combined with the white police attacks on innocent blacks,” had “reawakened” the country to the realization that racism was not resolved in the 1960s and ’70s.

    He said Mr. Trump had violated “basic human rights” when he referred to Mexican immigrants as criminals and called for a ban on Muslims’ entering the country.

    “When you single out any particular group of people for secondary citizenship status, that’s a violation of basic human rights,” said Mr. Carter, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his work with the Carter Center in promoting human rights and democracy in many countries.

    Asked why polls showed high support among evangelical Christians for Mr. Trump’s candidacy, Mr. Carter said: “The use of the word evangelical is a misnomer. I consider myself an evangelical as well. And obviously, what most of the news reporters thought were evangelicals are conservative Republicans.”

    “They have a heavy orientation to right-wing political philosophy, and he obviously is a proponent of that concept,” Mr. Carter said, referring to Mr. Trump.

    He pointed out that the evangelicals in the Southern Baptist Convention had aligned themselves with the Republican Party and organized the Moral Majority, a conservative Christian political group, only in the late 1970s, while he was president. Mr. Carter announced that he was leaving the Southern Baptist Convention in 2000, after the denomination solidified its turn to the right and declared that it would not accept women as pastors.

    Mr. Carter founded the New Baptist Covenant by reaching out to black and white Baptist associations, many of which had split many years ago over slavery. Nearly 15,000 people from 30 Baptist associations attended the founding meeting in 2008.

    Hannah McMahan, the executive director of the New Baptist Covenant, said the group had been in a “pilot phase” for the last two years. She said black and white churches had formed partnerships, called covenants, in Dallas; Macon, Ga.; St. Louis; Birmingham, Ala.; and Atlanta. But the process is painstaking, Ms. McMahan said, adding, “What this has given me an appreciation for is how deep the divides are, and that this kind of work will not happen overnight.”

    The work is especially challenging in this climate, said the Rev. Raphael G. Warnock, the senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, the church where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was once a pastor. Ebenezer Baptist is participating in the New Baptist Covenant.

    “This is a dark moment in our national conversation,” Pastor Warnock said. “Those of us who understand that we are better together had better raise our voices, because there are others who are trafficking in theater, in paranoia, and they ply the trade of fear as part of their political craft.”

    However, he said, “I’m much more fired up than discouraged, because the ugliness of the rhetoric we’re seeing in this election cycle really just brings into sharp focus the ugly underbelly of bigotry that has always been there.”