Greene County Democrat

Month: June 2025

  • Here comes the 50th: Black Belt Folk Roots Festival plans 50th community celebration

    By: Carol P. Zippert
    Festival Coordinator
     
        In  1975, the organizers of the first Black Belt Folk Roots Festival in Greene County, Jane and Hubert Sapp, perhaps did not envision that their phenomenal cultural celebration would endure to approach its 50th year.  However, it has come to past through the leadership of the Society of Folk Arts & Culture, the year 2025 will mark the 50th production of the festival scheduled for August 23-24.
        The festival was organized to pay tribute to those persons recognized as bearers of the folkway, traditions and culture of the West Alabama Region, exemplified through their creations in craft, music, storytelling and foodways.  As the elders move on, there are fewer old fashioned quilts and baskets, but the young folk come with their own brand of “handmade.” They bring a variety of jewelry and other adornments; home made soaps in exotic scents but with useful purposes. They bring art works depicting their views of the world, or just living in a day. They offer decorative items to cheer a body and a home. But the young crafters come and claim the festival in their own ways –  Here comes the 50th.
        The festival’s music stage continues.  Saturday’s blues recounts struggles, hardship and pain. Sunday’s gospel lifts the spirit in the joy of making it over. The grateful music is accented by the colorful crafts that adorn the grounds as well.
        Hopefully the 2025 Black Belt Folk Roots Festival will again feature the Kid’s Tent with hands-on art workshops. The Kid’s Tent is a special adventure for children at the festival.  They don’t have to do “grown folk stuff.” They have their own piece of the celebration.  Various art supplies are provided for the children to work at their own creations, which they can keep.  The Kid’s Tent also offers pottery making, face painting and games – Here comes the 50th.
         The Black Belt Folk Roots Festival is not a festival without the traditional foods. One could wonder, does the food make the people important or the people make the food important. However, the people and food are inseparable at the festival.  There are sufficient folk to crowd all the booths – seeking soul food dinners, Polish sausage and bear burgers, fried chicken or fish, deep fried skins and cracklin, tea cakes, pies, popcorn, snow cones and sometimes homemade ice cream and so much more – Here comes the 50th.
           There are costs in producing the festival and we are grateful there are contributors who value the festival.  The Alabama Tourism Department, Alabama Power Foundation, the Black Belt Community Foundation, grants from Legislators, other non-profits and local merchants support the production of the festival – Here comes the 50th.
        The participating artists receive travel honoraria and they always accept what we are able to provide. There are technicians and ground workers to support as well; tents, tables and chairs to rent.  One local couple brings their shop fans to keep us cool under the big tent. The festival belongs to everyone.  City and county governments render invaluable in-kind services including making restrooms in the courthouse accessible to festival goers; assisting with traffic, parking, vendors set-up and general safety.  The festival features another important health safety measure, vaccinations and testing are available on the grounds, provided by Rural Alabama Prevention Center, directed by Mrs. Loretta Wilson – Here comes the 50th.
        This festival is unique in that there is no admission charge, simply because it is a community celebration. It would be like charging your family a fee to come home for Thanksgiving. The festival brings people together because they need and desire to be together – Here comes the 50th.
        The 2025 annual Black Belt Folk Roots Festival is scheduled for Saturday, August 23 and Sunday, August 24, on the Rev. Thomas Gilmore Square (the old courthouse square, downtown Eutaw, AL). We look forward to seeing you at our community celebration – Here comes the 50th.


    For more information contact: Carol Zippert at zippert.carol79@gmail.com or 205-372-0525.

     

     

     

  • Newswire : Defending Medicaid cuts, Ernst tells Iowans, ‘We all are going to die’

    Senator Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa, on Capitol Hill in January.Credit…Eric Lee/The New York Times
     

    By Annie Karni, New York Times


    Senator Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa, had a gloomy message for constituents at a town hall in Butler County, Iowa, on Friday morning: “We all are going to die.”
    Ms. Ernst was fielding questions about cuts to Medicaid that were included in the domestic policy bill working its way through Congress, when someone in the audience yelled out that the effect would be that “people are going to die.”
    “Well, we all are going to die,” Ms. Ernst responded, drawing jeers from the crowd.
    Ms. Ernst appeared taken aback by the negative response. “For heaven’s sakes, folks,” she said.
    Democrats moved quickly to call attention to the comment from Ms. Ernst, a second-term lawmaker who is up for re-election next year. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee circulated a video clip of the moment, calling Ms. Ernst’s remark “stunningly callous” and saying that it came as Republicans in Congress were pushing massive cuts to Medicaid that would leave “millions of Americans uninsured in order to pay for a tax giveaway for billionaires.”

    The sprawling legislation Ms. Ernst was discussing, which contains a $4 trillion tax cut that would provide the biggest savings to the wealthy, also would make several changes to Medicaid, including adding a strict new work requirement, an end to state provider taxes to help states match Federal funds, and other steps. The independent, nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected that the bill would cause around 10 million Americans to become uninsured.
    Ms. Ernst’s comment on Friday came after town hall attendees interrupted her as she was highlighting provisions in the domestic policy measure that seek to ensure that undocumented immigrants, who are not eligible to enroll in Medicaid, would not receive any services. As they defend the legislation, Republicans often refer to that aspect of it, suggesting that the only major changes it would make to Medicaid would be cracking down on waste and abuse in the program, including illegal use by undocumented people.
    Still, it is the more morbid portion of Ms. Ernst’s remarks that Democrats are likely to play on repeat in campaign ads against her in the coming months.
    Ms. Ernst’s Democratic challenger Nathan Sage, a Marine Corps veteran who served in Iraq and currently leads the Knoxville Chamber of Commerce, was in the audience and said he was stunned when he heard her remark.
    “It was this jaw-dropping moment — how the hell can you say something like that?” Mr. Sage said in an interview. “The crowd was already hot. She was there to answer questions and get out. It just showed she doesn’t care about us.”
    Mr. Sage said he attended the town hall to hear voters’ top concerns. “The overall feeling from everyone in the room was she’s doing what she needs to do to keep her job,” he said.
    With her re-election top of mind, Ms. Ernst, a survivor of sexual assault and the Senate’s first female combat veteran, earlier this year caved to a right-wing pressure campaign and voted to confirm Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth despite expressing reservations about his bid.
    In a statement, a spokesman for Ms. Ernst said that Democrats were trying to “fearmonger against strengthening the integrity of Medicaid.”
    The spokesman added: “There’s only two certainties in life: death and taxes, and she’s working to ease the burden of both by fighting to keep more of Iowans’ hard-earned tax dollars in their own pockets and ensuring their benefits are protected from waste, fraud, and abuse.”

     

  • Newswire : Courts to review legality of Trump’s tariffs

    By April Ryan, NNPA White House Correspondent

    The Trump White House vows to appeal the three-judge panel of the United States Court of International Trade’s ruling that the proposed presidential tariffs exceed his legal authority. This ruling means neither President Trump nor his administration can arbitrarily invoke tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977.
    The three judges appointed by former Presidents Reagan, Obama, and Trump unanimously made the decision. The courts essentially deemed the president’s tariff declaration invalid. Democratic Texas Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett says President Trump “has a lot of emergencies in his mind for sure.” However, Crockett emphasized that this nation is not in an emergency to declare tariffs. “That act declared we are under siege. We are not at war,” assured Crockett.
    Congress, which typically holds the purse strings under the Constitution, regulates import commerce with foreign nations. Michigan Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Dingle believes “it’s a win for consumers. It will not immediately increase costs in stores, which is what I’m worried about. But what’s the next step?” At the White House podium this week, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the courts should have no role here. There is a troubling and dangerous trend of unelected judges inserting themselves into the presidential decision-making process.”
    However, the ruling temporarily alleviates growing concerns about the cost of imports, from food to cars and more.  Thursday, Dingle told Black Press USA in Mackinac, Michigan, at the Detroit Regional Chamber of Congress Meeting, “Every industry needs certainty, and they’re all dealing with a lot of uncertainty. The autos don’t want to be a ping pong ball. They’re too trying to keep their heads down and figure it out. So what we need for the industry and other companies is certainty.” The Trump administration has already filed motions to change the decision. Meanwhile, Crockett, a lawyer turned politician, says she’s “excited that some branch of government put a check on the executor.”

  • Newswire : Stolen, returned, remembered: 19 Black Americans reburied in New Orleans

    African drummers participate in funeral ceremony for the remains of 19 Black Americans returned by Germany university and  New Orleans Second Line

    By Stacy M. Brown
Black Press USA Senior National Correspondent

    More than 150 years after their crania were taken from New Orleans and shipped to Germany for racist scientific experiments, 19 Black Americans were finally laid to rest. In a moving display of remembrance and restoration, Dillard University, the City of New Orleans, and University Medical Center held a traditional jazz funeral and memorial service to honor the 13 men, four women, and two unidentified individuals whose remains were stolen in the 1870s by a local physician and sent overseas.

    The ceremony, held on May 31, included student pallbearers, an interfaith service, and a burial at the Katrina Memorial. “This was not just an act of remembrance,” Dr. Eva Baham, chair of the Repatriation Committee and former Dillard professor, said during an appearance on Black Press USA’s Let It Be Known News morning show. “It was a restoration of humanity.”

    Each person was memorialized in a handcrafted funeral vessel etched with their name, age, and date of death. The vessels featured Adinkra symbols representing universal spirituality and were carried by students from universities in the New Orleans area. The service involved multiple faiths—including Christianity, Islam, Judaism, SGI Buddhism, the Baha’i tradition, and West African rituals—to honor the unknown spiritual identities of the deceased. “This was deeply cultural and deeply intentional,” Baham said. “We weren’t going to bring them home just to store them away. They were brought back with reverence and sealed into the earth.”
    The repatriation followed a 2023 outreach by the University of Leipzig, where the crania had been housed for over a century. Researchers there acknowledged the harm done and initiated the return. The remains, all traced to individuals who died at Charity Hospital in 1871 and 1872, were taken during a time when pseudoscience like phrenology falsely claimed to measure intelligence and inferiority by skull shape—an ideology used to justify slavery and racial hierarchy.
    “This is how we begin to heal from the atrocities committed in the name of science,” Baham said. New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell, Dillard University President Monique Guillory, and community leaders led the ceremony. The final resting place, the Katrina Memorial, sits near the historic grounds where Charity Hospital once buried the poor and marginalized. “We may never know where their full bodies are,” Baham noted. “But perhaps—just perhaps—we brought them back together in spirit.”

  • Newswire : New highly infectious COVID-19 variant detected in the U.S.

    Patient getting a vaccination for COVID-19

    By Headline Smart

    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has confirmed the presence of a new, highly infectious COVID-19 variant in the United States, including New York City. The variant, known as NB.1.81, was initially detected in the U.S. in late March and early April among international travelers arriving at airports in California, Washington State, Virginia, and New York City. Additional cases have since been reported in Ohio, Rhode Island, and Hawaii.
    The CDC has stated that the number of cases in the U.S. is currently too small to be accurately tracked in the agency’s variant estimates. However, experts are raising concerns due to the variant’s rapid spread in China, where it has become the dominant strain. The variant has led to a significant increase in COVID-19 cases across Asia, with China experiencing a surge in hospitalizations and emergency room visits.
    Hong Kong authorities have reported a significant increase in COVID-19 cases, reaching the highest levels in at least a year. This surge has been attributed to the NB.1.81 variant, which has resulted in 81 severe cases in the past month, including 30 deaths. Most of these cases have been among adults aged 65 and older.
    In mainland China, the percentage of patients visiting the ER due to COVID-19 has more than doubled in the past month, from 7.5% to over 16%, according to public health authorities. The percentage of people hospitalized for COVID-19 in China has also doubled, reaching over 6%.
    Despite these statistics, the Beijing-controlled government in Hong Kong has downplayed the severity of the variant, stating that it does not appear to be more dangerous than previous variants. However, experts warn that the variant’s rapid spread in China, Hong Kong, and other areas indicates an increase in hospitalizations.
    The CDC’s airport tests have revealed the extent of the variant’s spread, with infected travelers having passed through China, Japan, South Korea, France, Thailand, the Netherlands, Spain, Vietnam, and Taiwan. Like other forms of COVID-19, the variant can cause symptoms such as coughing, a sore throat, fever, and fatigue.
    Experts have noted that the new variant appears to spread more easily, although it does not seem to be more severe. However, Dr. Edwin Tsui, the head of Hong Kong’s Centre for Health Protection, has warned that the variant should not be taken lightly, as evidence suggests it may have evolved to further evade the protections of COVID vaccines.
    The CDC has recently announced that it will no longer recommend that healthy children and pregnant women receive the COVID-19 vaccine. This decision comes as the Trump administration plans to limit annual booster vaccines to seniors and other high-risk groups.
    The shift in the federal response to stopping covid vaccines for certain segments of society and the increase in cases of measles and the uptick in COVID and flu at the beginning of the year has Americans pondering what we know or don’t know. Medical professionals are concerned there is something else on the horizon. Bird flu is a concern. Dr. Jehan El-bayoumi, a practicing physician and instructor at Georgetown University Medical Center spoke with Black Press USA on the rise in these illnesses and concerns the medical profession has.

  • Newswire : Billions ripped from Minority-Owned Firms under Trump

    By Stacy M. Brown
Black Press USA Senior National Correspondent


    The Trump administration is dismantling the very programs created to correct generations of systemic racism and economic exclusion—programs that helped level the playing field for Black, Latino, Indigenous, and women entrepreneurs. In a series of targeted assaults, Trump has moved to destroy the federal government’s most effective tools for uplifting historically disadvantaged communities, threatening billions of dollars and tens of thousands of jobs.
    In the most devastating move yet, Trump’s Justice Department filed to end the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) Program, a nearly $37 billion affirmative action initiative that for decades guaranteed at least 10 percent of federal transportation contracts would go to minority- and women-owned firms. The administration now claims the DBE program violates the Constitution’s equal protection clause, siding with two White-owned companies that sued because they didn’t want to compete with firms led by people of color.
    If approved, the settlement would kill the DBE’s founding mission—to address the entrenched discrimination that has locked out marginalized groups from federal contracting. The Biden administration previously defended the program, recognizing that race-neutral alternatives alone cannot erase centuries of inequality. But Trump’s team reversed course, citing the Supreme Court’s ban on race-conscious college admissions to justify gutting one of the country’s last-standing economic justice efforts.

    “Today’s decision helps ensure that the voices of minority- and women-owned businesses will be heard in a case that directly threatens their opportunity to participate fairly in federally funded transportation work,” said Brooke Menschel, Senior Counsel at Democracy Forward. “With this ruling, the court has recognized what’s at stake—not just for these businesses, but for the longstanding principles of redressing past discrimination in our economy.”
    At the same time, Trump signed an executive order aimed at neutralizing the Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA)—the only federal agency solely dedicated to supporting minority-owned businesses. Under President Biden, the MBDA helped secure over $3.2 billion in contracts and $1.6 billion in capital for entrepreneurs of color, creating or preserving more than 23,000 jobs. Trump’s action, combined with a recent court ruling that barred the MBDA from considering race in program eligibility, threatens to erase those gains. “These actions are designed to kill progress,” said Rep. Maxine Waters, the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee. “This isn’t just neglect—it’s sabotage.”
    Even as Trump claims to champion small business, his policies have delivered devastating blows to those most in need. A Kentucky judge previously issued an injunction weakening the DBE program, and now Trump’s administration is making that decision permanent. Meanwhile, courts and right-wing organizations aligned with Trump are challenging the very legality of race-conscious aid, using the courts to do what Congress would never allow—turn back the clock on civil rights. In response, a coalition of minority- and women-owned business groups successfully petitioned the court to intervene. Their warning is blunt: without DBE and MBDA protections, many minority-owned firms will collapse.
    “This decision is an important step forward in the hearing of minority- and women-owned businesses who want to ensure that Congress’s laws creating and maintaining the longstanding ‘Disadvantaged Business Enterprise’ contracting program are preserved,” said Douglas L. McSwain of Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs. ”They will have the opportunity to demonstrate that the program is important and needed to help prevent ongoing discriminatory practices.”