Greene County Democrat

Month: June 2018

  • World Elder Abuse Awareness Day to be observed on Friday, June 15, 2018 Alabama’s reponse to Elder Abuse

     

    Judge Judy

    Shown above Judge of Probate, Judy Spree signing a proclamation for the Greene County DHR Service Staff Wilson Morgan, Director, Jacqueline Hughes- Family & Children Services Supervisor, Beverly Vester– Q.A Coordinator, Kimberly Tyree, CA/N investigator not pictured: Latonya Wooley, Foster Care Worker

    The elderly population and disabled adults in our state and communities have the right to feel safe and to be treated with dignity and respect. Unfortunately, this is not the case for every elderly individual and disabled adult in our state. Based upon reports from previous years, thousands of elderly individuals and disabled adults have been and are being abused, neglected and exploited in Alabama every year.
    In an effort to promote elder abuse awareness, agencies, organizations, communities and professionals around the world will unite on June 15th to observe World Elder Abuse Awareness Day. The following activities are scheduled to take place in Greene County in observance of World Elder Abuse Awareness.

    Greene County DHR employees will wear Purple Ribbons all month. Employees will wear Purple on June 15, 2018. Greene County DHR will host an Event to promote Elder Abuse Awareness on June 27, 2018 at the Eutaw Activity Center starting at 1:30 p.m. to discuss issues regarding the elderly and disabled adults.
    The national theme for this year’s observance is “Building Strong Support for Elders”. The nationally recognized color to represent elder abuse awareness is purple. We are asking each community member to please wear purple throughout the month of June, particularly on the 15th.
    “Greene County Department of Human Resources (DHR) Director, Mr. Wilson Morgan stated community partners can help by reporting suspected abuse, neglect, and exploitation and by assisting DHR with arranging services to protect those individuals that cannot protect themselves. Our community partners are essential to assisting DHR in providing for the safety of the elderly population and disabled adults”.
    The Department of Human Resources (DHR) is responsible for investigating reports of abuse, neglect, and exploitation regarding the elderly and disabled adults. In FY 2017, DHR investigated approximately 9,700 reports of suspected abuse, neglect and exploitation of vulnerable adults statewide, which included elderly individuals and disabled adults.
    DHR is requesting the assistance of all community members to help with protecting our vulnerable citizens as they have contributed so much to society. If you suspect an elderly person or an adult with disabilities is being mistreated please contact Greene County DHR at (205) 372-5000 to make a report.
    Reports may also be made toll free to Adult Abuse Hotline 1-800-458-7214, and via online at aps@dhr.alabama.gov.   All reports are confidential and may be made anonymously.

  • Newswire : Black woman says she was forced to expose herself at Target to prove she didn’t steal

    From reports by Huffington Post
    Target.jpg
    Ashanae Davis with Atty. Jasmine Rand

    In an incident characterized as racial profiling by her attorneys, a black Michigan woman says she was forced to expose her body to employees at a Detroit-area Target after being falsely accused of stealing a bikini from the store.
    Ashanae Davis, 20, said she had been walking out of a Target in Southfield on May 22 when a male security worker, who was black, grabbed her by the arm and prevented her from leaving.
    According to Davis’ lawyer Jasmine Rand, a second security worker, who was white, then handcuffed her client and “dragged” her through the store while yelling loudly that Davis was wearing “stolen bikini panties … underneath her clothing.”
    “He said that over and over. Loud enough for other customers to hear and loud enough to publicly humiliate our client,” Rand, a prominent civil rights attorney who has also represented the families of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown, said at a news conference on Monday.
    Davis’ lawyers called this humiliating practice the “Target Walk of Shame,” which they described as a “de facto policy” at Target stores nationwide aimed at embarrassing would-be shoplifters. In 2015, the retailer was sued by a California woman after her 22-year-old son died by suicide after allegedly being subjected to the so-called shame walk.
    According to Davis’ attorneys, their client was then escorted to a room, where she was told to lift her shirt and pull down her pants. A white female manager was in the room at the time, as were the two male security workers. The trio found nothing stolen on Davis’ person and eventually allowed her to leave the store.
    “At first I was in shock, of course, and it was just very humiliating,” Davis told WXYZ-TV of the ordeal. “I felt degraded. It was sad. I was very upset.”
    On Tuesday, Target apologized for the incident and said it had fired one of its employees over what happened. The retailer later told NBC News that it was the black security worker who’d lost his job.
    “We want everyone who shops at Target to feel welcomed and respected and take any allegations of mistreatment seriously,” the company said in a statement. “We’re sorry for the actions of our former team member, who created an experience we don’t want any guest to have at Target. Upon reviewing our team’s actions, we terminated the team member who was directly involved and are addressing the situation with the security team at the store.”
    Target added that Davis had been stopped because a new bikini with tags still attached was allegedly spotted in her bag. The swimsuit had been purchased from a different store and not from Target, NBC reported.
    Reacting to Target’s response to the situation, Rand expressed dismay. “If only one employee was held accountable for the incident, and that employee was fired on the day we held the press conference, I find Target’s efforts disingenuous. If Target fired only the African American male employee, I find the effort a compounding act of racial discrimination. Hate can’t drive out hate from corporate culture,” she told HuffPost in a Tuesday statement.
    “[Target’s] corporate officers need to take a page out of Starbucks’ book and close their stores to do racial and gender sensitivity trainings,” she added.
    According to the Detroit Free Press, Davis and her attorneys are planning to take legal action against Target but have yet to file suit.
    Rand said her office had received multiple calls from other African American women who have had “eerily similar experiences at Target.”
    “One of the women had a similar experience at the same exact location,” Rand said. “The nation will hear their voices very soon.”
    A man in Minnesota accused Target in February of racially profiling him after he was told by a store employee that he couldn’t touch a pair of headphones before buying them.
    “You racial profiled me?” James Edward Wright III asked the employee in a cellphone video he captured. “Sure,” the employee responded.
    In April, Target agreed to pay $3.7 million to settle a lawsuit that alleged the company’s criminal background check process was biased against Latinos and African Americans.

  • Newswire: Black workers lag behind whites in the energy sector

    By Freddie Allen (Editor-in-Chief, NNPA Newswire and BlackPressUSA.com)

     

    Workers install solar panels.jpg

     Workers install solar panels
    Energy jobs are growing faster than the national average and energy-related sectors are less diverse than the national workforce, according to the 2018 U.S. Energy and Employment Report (USEER).
    “The nation’s energy sector employed 6.5 million Americans in 2017, up 133,000 jobs from the year prior,” a press release about the report noted. “This two percent growth rate exceeded the national average of 1.7 percent. Jobs in the energy sectors accounted for nearly 7 percent of all new jobs nationwide in 2017.”
    National Association of State Energy Officials (NASEO) and the Energy Futures Initiative (EFI) released the report last week. NASEO is the only national non-profit association for the governor-designated energy officials from each of the 56 states and territories, according to the group’s website. EFI provides policymakers, industry leaders, NGOs with data driven, unbiased policy recommendations, “to advance a cleaner, safer, more affordable and more secure energy future.” The report said that the companies surveyed anticipate roughly 6.2 percent employment growth for 2018.

    Despite the positive growth trends, ethnic and racial minorities account for a smaller share of the workforce in the energy-related sectors than their corresponding national averages, the report said. Hispanic or Latino workers account for 10-19 percent of the labor force in energy-related sectors, compared to 17 percent in the overall economy. Black workers hold 5-9 percent of the jobs in energy-related sectors and account for 12 percent of the national workforce.
    The USEER examines four sectors of the energy economy: Electric Power Generation and Fuels; Transmission, Distribution, and Storage; Energy Efficiency; and Motor Vehicles.
    According to the report, Electric Power Generation covers all utility and non-utility employment across electric generating technologies including fossil fuels, nuclear, and renewable energy technologies.
    “Energy Efficiency employers project the highest growth rate over 2018 (9 percent), followed by Electric Power Generation (8 percent); Motor Vehicles (almost 7 percent, including a 6 percent increase in manufacturing), Transmission, Distribution, and Storage (3 percent), and the Fuels sector (2 percent),” the report said.
    According to the report, Electric Power Generation covers all utility and non-utility employment across electric generating technologies including fossil fuels, nuclear, and renewable energy technologies. Employment totals for any firms engaged in facility construction, turbine and other generation equipment manufacturing, as well as wholesale parts distribution of all electric generation technologies are also included in that metric, the report said.
    The Electric Power Generation sector included 883,842 jobs in 2017, up nearly 2 percent from the previous year’s 867,434 workers, and employers report a projected 8 percent growth over 2018, the report said.
    Blacks account for 9 percent of the electric power generation workforce (76,985) compared to White workers who hold 70 percent of the electric power generation jobs (615,696).
    Fuels employment includes all work related to fuel extraction and mining, including petroleum refineries and firms that support coal mining, oil, and gas field machinery manufacturing, the report said. The Fuels sector employed 1,074,935 workers in 2017, compared to the previous year’s level of over 1,081,000 jobs, according to the report.
    “Workers across both the forestry and agriculture industries that support fuel production with corn ethanol, biodiesels, and fuel wood are also included in the fuel employment estimates,” the report said.
    Blacks workers account for 5 percent of the Fuels workforce (53,488) and Whites account for 84 percent of the Fuels workforce (903,045).
    According to the USEER, Energy Efficiency employment covers both the production of energy-saving products and the provision of services that reduce end-use energy consumption. “However, the USEER only captures employment with certified energy efficiency products or those installed according to ENERGY STAR guidelines, as well as advanced building materials such as insulation,” the report said. African Americans account for 8 percent of the energy efficiency workforce (176,303) compared to White workers that hold 78 percent of the jobs in that sector (1,748,399).
    The U.S. Motor Vehicles sector employed roughly 2.46 million Americans in 2017, increasing by nearly 29,000 employees over 2016. The Motor Vehicles jobs measure doesn’t include dealerships and retailers. According to the report, 39.7 percent of employment in that sector consists of manufacturing and 37.8 percent involves vehicle repair and maintenance. Nearly 20 percent of workers are involved in direct transport of motor vehicle parts and supplies via air, rail, water, or truck, as well as merchant wholesalers for motor vehicle parts and supplies, the report said.
    Blacks hold 180,031 of the jobs in the Motor Vehicles sector accounting for 8 percent of the workforce compared to White workers who hold 1,832,239 of the jobs and 78 percent of the Motor Vehicles workforce.
    The Electric Power Transmission, Distribution, and Storage sector encompasses the jobs associated with constructing, operating, and maintaining this infrastructure. It also includes workers associated with the entire network of power lines that transmit electricity from generating stations to customers as well as activities that support power and pipeline construction, fuel distribution and transport, and the manufacture of electrical transmission equipment, the USEER said. Like the Motor Vehicles sector, Black workers account for 8 percent of the Electric Power Transmission, Distribution, and Storage sector labor force and 97,084 of the jobs. Whites make up 71 percent of the workforce in that sector and hold 854,224 of the jobs.
    “The USEER has proven to be an important tool for state energy officials, who will use this unique set of ‘all of the above’ energy jobs data to inform policy development and planning,” said David Terry, the executive director of the National Association of State Energy Officials (NASEO).
    During a presentation about the report on Capitol Hill, Ernest J. Moniz, the former Energy Secretary under President Barack Obama, called the report a foundation for state governments, non-profit organizations and businesses to analyze the data and develop policy proposals.

  • Newswire: Harvard Study: Black men sentenced to longer prison terms than whites convicted of the same crimes

    By Frederick H. Lowe
    Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from NorthStarNewsToday.com

    (TriceEdneyWire.com) – Republican-appointed judges to the federal bench sentence Black men to longer prison terms compared with White men convicted of the same crime, according to a study by the Harvard Law School.
    The report also found that Black judges impose shorter sentences on average than non-Black judges. However, in Chicago there hasn’t been a Black man on the federal bench since 2012, Crain’s Chicago Business reported in January 2016.
    The study “Judicial Politics and Sentencing Decisions,” reported that the racial disparity in sentencing decisions contributes to the fact that Black defendants comprise a disproportionate fraction of the prison population relative to their percentage of the overall population,” the study found. The Federal Bureau of Prisons reported Saturday, May 26, that Blacks comprised 37.8 percent of the prison population or 69,324 inmates.
    Over 95 percent of criminal convictions are the result of guilty pleas. Once a plea deal is reached and accepted by the judge, the judge schedules sentencing.
    Black offenders were sentenced to 4.8 months more in prison compared to similar non-black offenders, the study reported.
    Prison sentences have grown for federal inmates from 17.9 months in 1988 to 37.5 months in 2012 for violent, property, drug, public order, weapon and immigration crimes, according to Pew Research Center.
    In comparison, women offenders receive 12.1 fewer months in prison compared to male offenders. Defendants with children are sentenced to longer terms in prison than defendants with fewer dependents.
    To arrive at its findings, researchers at Harvard Law School studied the sentencing data of more than 546,916 federal defendants linked to federal judges. Harvard studied defendants sentenced between 1999 and 2015 and they observed the sentencing practices of approximately 1,400 unique judges.
    “Male defendants are sentenced to substantially longer time in prison than female defendants even after accounting for arrest offense and criminal history,” the report said.
    There are 677 authorized federal judgeships in 94 district courts as of 2017, Harvard reported. Most of the districts have between two and seven authorized judgeships.

  • Newswire: LeBron James and Stephen Curry agree on one thing: Neither of them want to visit Trump

    By Ed Mazza, Huffington Post
    LeBron James and Steph Curry .jpg

    James and  Curry

    Rivals LeBron James of the Cleveland Cavaliers and Stephen Curry of the Golden State Warriors have managed to agree on something: No matter which team wins the NBA championship, neither one of them plans to visit the White House if invited by President Donald Trump.
    “I know whoever wins this series, no one wants an invite anyway,” James told reporters on Tuesday.
    “I agree with ’Bron,” Curry said at a separate news conference. “Pretty sure the way we handled things last year, kinda staying consistent with that.”
    When the Warriors won the NBA championship last year, Curry indicted he would not attend a planned White House ceremony, prompting Trump to disinvite the team via Twitter.
    “Going to the White House is considered a great honor for a championship team,” the president tweeted in September. “Stephen Curry is hesitating, therefore invitation is withdrawn!”
    At the time, James called out Trump on Twitter, saying he couldn’t disinvite Curry… because Curry wasn’t going to attend anyway:
    Curry’s Warriors lead James’ Cavaliers, 2-0, in the finals. Game Three is Wednesday night in Cleveland. It’s the fourth consecutive year that the two teams have met in the finals.
    Trump this week cancelled a White House celebration for the Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles, claiming it was because “they disagree with their President because he insists that they proudly stand for the National Anthem.” However, many of the team’s players were not planning to attend.
    Warriors coach Steve Kerr said Trump’s behavior wasn’t surprising.
    “The president has made it pretty clear he’s going to try to divide us, all of us, in this country for political gain,” he said. “We all look forward to the day we can go back to just having a celebration of athletic achievement.”