Greene County Democrat

Category: Community

  • Girls freed from Boko Haram reunited with families

    Jane Onyanga-Omara , USA TODAY

    nigerian-girls-returned

     Some of the Nigerian girls

    The 21 girls who were rescued last week after being kidnapped by the militant group Boko Haram more than two years ago have been reunited with their families.

    They were among more than 200 students taken from their school in the northeastern Nigerian town of Chibok by the extremists in April 2014, sparking the global “Bring Back Our Girls” social media campaign.

    Speaking at a ceremony in the capital Abuja on Sunday, one of the girls said they were starved, the BBC reported. Many were forced to convert from Christianity to Islam.

    Information Minister Lai Mohammed denied reports that the girls were released in exchange for four detained Boko Haram leaders. The Nigerian government also denied that a ransom was paid. Some 197 kidnapped girls are believed to remain missing.

    The negotiations for the girls’ release were brokered by the International Red Cross and the Swiss government.

    Speaking Sunday, the Nigerian president’s spokesman said the Boko Haram splinter group that released the girls was willing to negotiate the release of 83 more girls.

    “These 21 released girls are supposed to be tale bearers to tell the Nigerian government that this faction of Boko Haram has 83 more Chibok girls,” Garba Shehu, spokesman for President Muhammadu Buhari, told Reuters by phone                  https://twitter.com/PhilipObin/status/787768790012551169

    “The faction said it is ready to negotiate if the government is willing to sit                            down with them,” he said, adding that authorities were willing to negotiate.

     

    Commenting on work to free the 83 girls, Mohammed said: “Already we are on phase two and we are already in discussions. But of course you know these are very delicate negotiations, there are some promises we made also about the confidentiality of the entire exercise and we intend to keep them.”

    International Alert — a London-based peace building charity — said it worked with the United Nations Children’s Fund in Nigeria and local organizations to help reintegrate girls who escaped from Boko Haram into their communities.

    “Tragically, the ordeal does not end when these girls and women escape or are rescued,” said Kimairis Toogood, an adviser for International Alert in Nigeria. “Many face rejection, and even violence, from their own families and communities due to stigma around sexual violence — especially if they return with a baby. This makes re-integration extremely difficult.”

    Shehu told Reuters that the splinter group said the rest of the kidnapped Chibok girls were with the part of the group that is under the control of Abubakar Shekau, who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group, also known as ISIL or ISIS, in March 2015.

    A number of extremists have moved away from Shekau over his failure to adhere to ISIL’s guidance, Reuters reported. In August, ISIL named Musab al-Barnawi as its new leader in west Africa.

     

     

  • #BlackoutBR protests, boycotts continue in Baton Rouge over Alton Sterling shooting

    By Meghan Ellis (The Drum, NNPA Member)

     

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    Protesters line the walls of a conference room at city hall during a police reform meeting in Baton Rouge, La. (The Drum)

     

     

     

    BATON ROUGE — As shootings continue to plague cities across the country, frustrated citizens are continuing their fight for justice. With each shooting, dashcam and other forms of surveillance footage have been released to ensure complete disclosure. Unfortunately, that hasn’t been the case with the deadly shooting of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge.

     

    After nearly three months, only the cell phone videos filmed by spectators have been released. In addition to the withholding of dashcam footage and other surveillance videos, Baton Rouge police officers Blane Salamoni and Howie Lake II are still on administrative leave. No charges have been brought against the officers and citizens are wondering why.

     

    Now, citizens and protesters are demanding answers. Monday, Sept. 26 was declared #BlackOutBR, a day where local citizens wore black clothes and did not work, go to college, or shop. A rally was held at the steps of City Hall calling for information on the Alton Sterling case. After the rally, protesters entered a police reform meeting to hear the committee’s plans and to demand answers and action.

     

    “The problem is, with an exception of a few, we don’t see these people in the community,” businessman Cleve Dunn Jr. told the committee. “When you look around and you don’t see the community, there should be no meeting.”

     

    The committee included District Attorney Hillar Moore, councilmembers Tara Wicker, Donna Collins Lewis and Erika Green, Baton Rouge Police Department Chief Carl Dabadie Jr., local pastors and residents.

     

    “What happens when leaders and protesters disrupt a meeting on police reform? Things get uncomfortable, they get real, and then they get a seat at the table, alongside the chief of police, the DA, & the DOJ,” wrote artist Walter Geno McLaughlin on Facebook.

     

    More than 30 protesters lined the walls of the small meeting room, including Sterling’s aunts. “We want to press upon our local government but also go all the way to feds that we want a decision on the investigation, said Dunn who explained the reason for the gathering and expressed protesters’ demands.

     

    “This issue of Alton Sterling has been divested from the people in this room as much as we hate to hear that,” said Will Jorden, who is an assistant district attorney and prosecutor. “We hear the frustration. I am frustrated. These pastors are frustrated. But what this [committee] does is give the people a sense of legitimacy and to be able to move forward with positive change.”

     

    Wicker said that the group wasn’t charged with coming up with solutions. “That’s not our job. That’s not what we are doing here,” said Wicker. “Our charge is to setup an infrastructure so that what you are saying can actually be heard, documented and put into a policy paper that will be submitted as the voice of the community.”

     

    Protesters presented a list of demands which included a request for changes to be made to city and state flood contracts. The change to contracts would require the cancellation of current contracts in order to include Black-owned firms in renegotiations. The third demand is in reference to police reform. With incidents of alleged injustices resolved with internal investigations, community leaders and local citizens adamantly believe there needs to be a task force in place on state and local law enforcement levels to reform police departments across the city and state.

     

        The Drum is a member publication of the National Newspaper Publishers Association. Learn more about becoming a member at www.nnpa.org.

     

  • Unions picket outside Trump’s Washington DC Hotel

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    Union members picket at Trump’s Hotel

    Hundreds of workers protested outside Donald Trump’s newly-opened hotel in Washington, D.C. on Thursday to demand he recognize and negotiate with the union at Las Vegas’ Trump International Hotel.

    Workers at the Las Vegas hotel, which is half-owned by the Republican presidential candidate, voted to organize in Dec. 2015 and the union was recognized by the National Labor Relations Board earlier this year.

    However, Trump and the hotel management have refused to recognize the vote of roughly 500 workers, saying it was “anything but free and fair.”

    Workers representing some of the country’s largest labor unions, including the AFL-CIO, CWA, AFSCME, and UNITE Here were holding banners and chanting: “What do we want? Contract! When do we want it? Now!”

    Similar pickets have been organized also outside Trump hotels in New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Honolulu.

    During his polemical presidential campaign, Trump has shown his disdain for unions, saying that wages are “too high.”

    With just weeks to go until Election Day on Nov. 8, polls show Trump is losing, with a widening gap between he and his Democratic Party rival, Hillary Clinton. His numbers dropped following the revelations of a lewd tape in which he boasted about sexually assaulting women.

     

     

     

  • National Police Group apologizes for past racial injustices, but not current ones

    Julia Craven Reporter, The Huffington Post

    police-in-charlotte

    Police in riot gear walk outside Bank of America Stadium before a football game in Charlotte, North Carolina in September. Protests disrupted the city after an officer fatally shot Keith Lamont Scott, a 43-year-old black man.

    The president of the largest police organization in the country issued an apology on Monday to communities of color for the “historic mistreatment” they have suffered at the hands of law enforcement officers.

    Terrence Cunningham, the police chief of Wellesley, Massachusetts, delivered the apology during a speech at the International Association of Chiefs of Police convention in San Diego. The IACP includes 23,000 police officials from across the United States, The Washington Post reports.

    “We must forge a path that allows us to move beyond our history and identify common solutions to better protect our communities,” Cunningham said. “For our part, the first step in this process is for law enforcement and the IACP to acknowledge and apologize for the actions of the past and the role that our profession has played in society’s historical mistreatment of communities of color.”

    “There have been times when law enforcement officers, because of the laws enacted by federal, state and local governments, have been the face of oppression for far too many of our fellow citizens,” he continued. “In the past, the laws adopted by our society have required police officers to perform many unpalatable tasks, such as ensuring legalized discrimination or even denying the basic rights of citizenship to many of our fellow Americans.” 1.

    Cunningham has a point. The relationship between law enforcement and communities of color has long been strained ― especially for African-Americans. Modern-day police forces grew out of slave patrols (at least in the South). During the height of the Jim Crow era, police officers were tasked with maintaining state-sanctioned racial oppression.

    “While this is no longer the case, this dark side of our shared history has created a multigenerational ― almost inherited ― mistrust between many communities of color and their law enforcement agencies,” Cunningham said.

    But racial discrimination in policing didn’t end with Jim Crow. Police officers are still required to enforce racially discriminatory laws ― such as SB 1070, an immigration law in Arizona that requires police to check the immigration status of anyone they think is in the country illegally. Or New York’s “stop and frisk” policy, which was ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge in New York in 2013 for violating the Fourth Amendment rights of Black and Latino New Yorkers.

    As movements like Black Lives Matter note, people of color ― especially African-Americans ― are disproportionately killed, harassed and stopped by the police for mundane reasons. Because of this, trust toward the police is far lower in communities of color.

    Cunningham is certainly aware of this: He pointed to the high-profile police shootings of unarmed black people that have “tragically undermined the trust that the public must and should have in their police departments.”

    “Many officers who do not share this common heritage often struggle to comprehend the reasons behind this historic mistrust,” Cunningham said. “As a result, they are often unable to bridge this gap and connect with some segments of their communities.”

  • President Obama Talks about the Future of HBCUs, at North Carolina A&T

    By Freddie Allen (NNPA Newswire Managing Editor)

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    President Obama

      During a recent town hall discussion at North Carolina A & T University in Greensboro, President Barack Obama said that historically Black colleges that are producing engineers, doctors and dentists serve as the foundation stone for building Black middle class wealth and success, and are also important to the entire nation.

    President Obama answered audience questions about the future of historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), his signature My Brother’s Keeper initiative and social activism at the event hosted by “The Undefeated,” an ESPN website dedicated to the exploration of sports, race and culture.

    As the nation grows more diverse and educational opportunities that were once off-limits to Blacks are now more available, some have questioned the relevancy of HBCUs.    In 2011, the Obama Administration received sharp criticism after changes in the Federal Direct PLUS loan program, disproportionately affected Black students attending HBCUs, forcing many to either delay their dreams of earning a college degree or abandon them altogether. Three years later, the Department of Education issued updated guidelines that were praised by higher education advocates and included less restrictive credit requirements for the loan program.

    Obama said that the challenge with the Parent PLUS program was that some of the loans offered were “particularly expensive” and left too many students deeply in debt without graduating. “The notion was to try to improve the way in which young people were financing their educations,” said Obama. “Part of the challenge here is to make sure, not just that [students] enroll in college, but that [they] graduate from college.”  Obama said that HBCUs receive $4 billion a year from the federal government and noted that Pell grant funding to HBCUs increased by 150 percent, while he’s been in office. The president also expressed concerns over state-level budget cuts to higher education that have had a significant impact on the financial stability of HBCUs.

    “Unless state legislatures pick up some of this slack, there’s only so much the federal government is going to be able to do to fill the void through loans, because ultimately loans mean debt and it adds up and people can get into trouble,” said Obama. “If you’re really concerned about more resources for HBCUs then you better vote. If you don’t vote, you won’t have any say in the decisions that are made in state capitals or in Congress about the support that you receive.”

    Obama also talked about the future of the My Brother’s Keeper initiative (MBK), a program that was launched to address the unique challenges facing young men and boys of color.

    Obama said that the central principle of (MBK) is to have some adult who is taking interest in the young men, “to have somebody that is showing them here’s an alternative here’s a pathway here’s an opportunity that you can seize and you are worth something and you are important and you are a leader.”   Obama added: “It doesn’t take a lot to transform the lives of young men.” MBK has partnered with organizations like the National Basketball Association and major corporations like Sprint have committed to make sure that one million young people have broadband Internet access to start closing that digital gap. Obama said that 250 communities and cities have launched local MBK programs.

    “Some cities are doing better than others, some corporate citizens are investing more than others and we want everybody to get involved,” said Obama.

    When asked about what it takes to manage the challenges of raising a family and a successful career, Obama admitted that balancing professional achievement and family is something that he and the First Lady of the United States Michelle Obama have had to wrestle with.

    Managing those responsibilities is particularly burdensome on the mom, said Obama.

    “There’s no doubt that Michelle carried a greater burden than I did, particularly, because the nature of my work required a lot of travel,” said Obama, adding that soon-to-be dads must understand the level of commitment required to balance work and family responsibilities successfully. He said that it was important to understand, that if you’re going to have a real partnership, you have to give and not just take and you have to be there and present at home.

    “On my deathbed I will not remember any bills I passed, I will not remember any speeches I gave, I will not remember getting the Nobel Prize,” said Obama. “What I will remember is holding hands with my daughters and taking them down to a park. That’s one thing I know, that on my deathbed, that is what I will remember and if you approach life with that attitude then you’re going to appropriately invest in what is most important.”

     

  • Tombigbee RC& Day held at Greene County Library

    tombigbee

    Shown above Donald Sherrod, Sen. Bobby Singleton, AJ McCampbell, Ralph  Howard, Elaheh Hesse, Darlene Robinson, Mattie Grey, William Lashley, Mollie Rowe, Fannie Smith, Mayor of Boligee Louis Harper, Tennyson Smith, and Rodney Parham.

    Tuesday, September 27, 2016 Tombigbee RC& D, a non profit organization specializing in bringing people together to identify and implement solutions addressing local issues, partnered with Senator Bobby Singleton (SD-24), Rep. Ralph Howard (HD-72) and A.J. McCampbell (HD-71) to promote several projects funded by Tombigbee RC& D throughout Greene County.
    Greene County 2015/2016 grant recipients gathered at the Greene County Library to make a presentation on their individual projects.
    Greene County Foster & Adoptive Parents Association was awarded $1,200.00 from Tombigbee RC&D to provide for teaching of social graces to young ladies in Girl Scout Troop 408 by exposing them to social and cultural events which build character and self esteem.SCORE, Inc. was awarded two grants; one educational and one general, from Tombigbee RC&D to provide internet and tutorial services for youth and funds to replace computers and software and to conduct workshops on weekends and summer months.
    The Town of Boligee received funds to create an organic, sustainable, edible oasis around a walking trail to provide shade as well as fruit for kids to harvest throughout the year. The project also included rain barrels, irrigation system for low maintenence, non-toxic sprays for pest control and composting to feed the soil.
    The RC & D program secures funding from state and local agencies, private foundations, and federal partnership to be dispersed through community grant requests serving the needs of the RC& D Council. The Tombigbee RC & D, is one of nine (9) councils that cover Alabama, serving Bibb, Fayette, Greene, Hale, Lamar, Pickens, Sumter and Tuscaloosa counties.
    Over the past two years, Tombigbee RC &D along with the advocacy and partnership of our elected officials and Greene County community organizations, invested $43,950.00 in Greene County to achieve community goals.
    Greene County recipients includes the following:
    “SCORE, INC.- $4,900, New Horizon (Farm Tech the Future)- $7,000; Greene County Foster & Adoptive Parent Assc.- $5,000; ImageMe- 7,300 ; Town of Boligee (Edible Paradise Walking Trial) $4,122; Girl Scout Troop 408 – $2,800.

  • County Commission responds to Sheriff Benison’ suit

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    Greene Co. Public Works Shop held a groundbreaking ceremony Tuesday, October 11, 2016 construction started on October 3, 2016 shown above L to R Commissioner Lester Brown, Clifford Safford of Safford Building Company, Commissioners Michael William, Tennyson Smith, Corey Cockrell and Allen Turner, Jr.
    The Greene County Commission, at its monthly meeting held Tuesday, October 11, 2016, authorized Attorney Hank Sanders to respond to Sheriff Jonathan Benison’s lawsuit filed last week which requests that the court enforce the Settlement Agreement with the commission.
    In an unanimous vote by the four commissioners present, the commission directed the attorney to respond that the county wants the Settlement Agreement enforced.
    Among the provisions of the Agreement, signed by the two parties last January, the Sheriff agreed to provide the county with $85 per bingo machine per month from each gaming facility beginning February 2016. The county’s records indicate that Sheriff Benison has not complied with this provision. These funds, if received from the Sheriff, would help support Sheriff Department personnel. The County agreed to make some upgrades at the jail, including improving the camera system. The commission explained it has been trying to get bids for the project.

    The commission voted to support several of the State’s Constitutional Amendments, relating to county government, which will be on the November 8 ballot, including Amendments 3, 4, and 14. Amendment 3 addresses how local legislation is enacted; Amendment 4 addresses increasing local power of county government; and Amendment 14 addresses the lawsuit claiming thousands of local bills are unconstitutional. This Amendment would cure the potential constitutional effect. During the meeting Commissioner Allen Turner’s motion to go into executive session failed for lack of a second.
    In other business the commission approved the following:
    *Re-appointment of John Zippert to Hospital Board from District 1; Appointment of Eddie Austin to Hospital Board from District 4.
    *Recognized Blake McMillian for completion of training with the Alabama Jail Training Academy.
    *Accepted resignation of driver for county’s nutrition site. County will advertise to fill the position.
    *Approved a ABC License for Mr. James Robinson
    *Bids on materials for Highway Department.
    *Approved 2017 Severe Weather Preparedness Tax Holiday February 24-26, 2017
    *Approved hiring of one Equipment Operator I and one Equipment Operator II for the Highway Department.
    *Approved GPS flyover with G Squared and authorize chairman to sign all necessary documents.
    *Approved travel for Commissioner and staff. Commissioner- Leg. Conference- December 7-8, Montgomery,Alabama, CFO - Governmental Accounting and Auditing- Nov. 30 – Dec1- Birmingham, Tax Seminar- December 6-7- Bessemer AL (CFO pay for personally) Jail Administrator- Oct. 18-21 Mobile AL – Alabama Jail Association.
    Please remember that Solid Waste Exemption Program began October 3 and will end November 30. There is a $10 adminstration fee and the application must be renewed annually.

  • ANSA endorses Clinton-Kaine ticket and makes recommendations Alabama Constitutional Amendments

    At its Fall Convention on October 1st in Wetumpka, the Alabama New South Alliance (ANSA), the political sister organization to the Alabama New South Coalition (ANSC) endorsed Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine for President and Vice-President for the November 8, 2016 General Election.
    The ANSA also endorsed all other statewide and Congressional candidates running on the Democratic Party, including Ron Crumpton, who is running for U. S. Senate against Republican incumbent, Richard Shelby. Local ANSC/ANSA chapters will also be endorsing candidates at the local county level.
    At the Convention, ANSA delegates reviewed the fourteen (14) Constitutional Amendments that will be on the November 8th General election ballot. The ANSA made recommendations on these amendments as listed below. The Greene County Democrat is publishing the official text of the 14 amendments, in our Legal Notices section beginning on page 9 of this newspaper.
    Amendment No. 1 – Yes : this amendment adds two at-large members to the Auburn University Board of Trustees to enhance diversity; it also limits the terms of Auburn Trustees, where no more than three will expire in the same year.
    Amendment No. 2 – Yes : prohibits the use of any monies in the funds for State Parks from being used for other state purposes.
    Amendment No. 3 – Yes: this is a procedural amendment which would allow the State Legislature to determine if amendments need to be voted on statewide or locally.
    Amendment No. 4 – Yes: would allow County Commissions to adopt programs and policies relating to county personnel, litter-free roadways, public transportation, safety on public roads and emergency assistance without having to ask the permission from the Legislature.
    Amendment No. 5 – Yes: modernizes the language in the Alabama State Constitution pertaining to the separation of powers between branches of government.

    Amendment No. 6 – Yes: modifies the procedures for impeachment of the Governor and other statewide Constitutional officers, including the State Board of Education and the Alabama Supreme Court.
    Amendment No. 7 – No: an amendment pertaining to the employees of the Office of the Etowah County Sheriff.
    Amendment No. 8 – No: this amendment would enshrine in the Alabama Constitution the state’s current right-to-work law, which is anti-union and prohibits employers from placing any conditions on workers based on their membership or non-membership in a union or other labor organization.
    Amendment No. 9 – No: this amendment would allow a person not over the age of 75 years to be elected or appointed Probate Judge of Pickens County. Currently all judges in the state are limited to age 70 to run for judicial office.
    Amendment No. 10 – No: an amendment relating to Calhoun County relating with territory within police and planning jurisdictions.
    Amendment No. 11 – No Endorsement: an amendment permitting cities and counties to sell certain city-or-county property for less than fair market value if the properties are in specially designated manufacturing zones.
    Amendment No. 12 – No Endorsement: an amendment relating to Baldwin County concerning toll roads and bridge authorities.
    Amendment No. 13 – Yes: an amendment to eliminate any law that imposes a maximum age restriction on the election or appointment of any public official, with the exception of judicial officers; and to prohibit the Legislature from enacting future laws to impose a maximum age limit for these positions.
    Amendment No. 14 – Yes: a procedural amendment dealing with the Budget Isolation Resolution (BIR) and insuring local legislation, passed between 1984 -2016 is legal based on procedures in place at the time.
    Officers of ANSA urged members and others in the community to vote on all offices and amendments on the ballot in November

  • Hurricane Matthew death toll passes 800 in Haiti, cholera takes lives

     

    By Makini Brice and Joseph Guyler Delva, Reuters

    Girls hold hands as they help each other wade through a flooded street after the passing of Hurricane Matthew in Les Cayes, Haiti, Thursday, Oct. 6, 2016. Two days after the storm rampaged across the country’s remote southwestern peninsula, authorities and aid workers still lack a clear picture of what they fear is the country’s biggest disaster in years. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery)
    Destroyed houses are seen in a village after Hurricane Matthew passes Corail, Haiti, October 6, 2016. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

    Children stand in flooded street in Haiti; and Destroyed houses are seen in a village after Hurricane Matthew passes Corail, Haiti, October 6, 2016.

     

    CHANTAL, Haiti/PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) – Hurricane Matthew’s trail of destruction in Haiti stunned those emerging from the aftermath on Friday, with the number of dead soaring to 877, tens of thousands left homeless and outbreaks of cholera already claiming more lives.

    Information trickled in from remote areas that were cut off by the storm and it became clear that at least 175 people died in villages clustered among the hills and on the coast of Haiti’s fertile western tip.

    Rural clinics overflowed with patients whose wounds including broken bones had not been treated since the storm hit on Tuesday. Food was scarce and at least seven people died of cholera, likely because of flood water mixing with sewage.

    The storm razed homes to their foundations. The corrugated metal roofs of those still standing were ripped off, the contents visible from above as if peering into doll’s houses.

    At least three towns reported dozens of fatalities, including the hilly farming village of Chantal, whose mayor said 86 people were killed, mostly when trees crushed houses. He said 20 more people were missing.

    “A tree fell on the house and flattened it, the entire house fell on us. I couldn’t get out,” said driver Jean-Pierre Jean-Donald, 27, who had been married for a year.

    “People came to lift the rubble, and then we saw my wife who had died in the same spot,” said Jean-Donald, his young daughter by his side, crying “Mommy.”

    The death toll continued to rise on Friday in southwest Haiti. Dozens more were missing, many of them in the Grand’Anse region on the northern side of the peninsula.

    “We flew over parts of the Grand’Anse region. It’s a humanitarian catastrophe,” said Frenel Kedner, a government official in the town of Jeremie in southwest Haiti. “The people urgently need food, water, medicine.”

    Cholera cases rise

    In the town of Anse-d’Hainault, seven people died of cholera, a disease that did not exist in Haiti until U.N. peace keepers introduced it after a 2010 earthquake that killed some 200,000 people.

    Another 17 cholera cases were reported in Chardonnieres on the south coast.

    “Due to massive flooding and its impact on water and sanitation infrastructure, cholera cases are expected to surge after Hurricane Matthew and through the normal rainy season until the start of 2017,” the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) said in a statement.

    With fatalities mounting, various government agencies and committees differed on total deaths. A Reuters count of deaths reported by civil protection and local officials put the toll at 877.

    Haiti’s central civil protection agency, which takes longer to collate numbers because it needs to visually confirm victims itself, said 271 people died asMatthew smashed through the western peninsula on Tuesday with 145 mph (233 kph) winds and torrential rain.

    Some 61,500 people were in shelters, the agency said.

    Matthew pushed the sea into fragile coastal villages, some of which are only now being contacted. Coastal town Les Anglais lost “several dozen” people, Louis-Paul Raphael, the central government representative in the region, told Reuters.

    Les Anglais was the first place in Haiti that Matthew reached, as a powerful Category 4 storm before it moved north, lost strength and lashed central Florida on Friday.

    With cellphone networks down and roads flooded by sea and river water, aid has been slow to reach towns and villages. Instead, locals have been helping each other.

    “My house wasn’t destroyed, so I am receiving people, like it’s a temporary shelter,” said Bellony Amazan in the town of Cavaillon, where around a dozen people died. Amazan said she had no food to give people.

    Outside Chantal, stall holders at a makeshift market were selling vegetables and soft drinks, brought in from Port-Au-Prince as roads were cleared to the capital.

    “All our houses have been destroyed. This is our existence,” said one stall holder, who declined to give her name.

     

     

  • Why we need a posthumous Presidential pardon for Marcus Garvey

    “Almost 100 years after a grave miscarriage of justice, he is still considered a criminal in the US.”

     By: Julius W. Garvey, M.D.Board-certified surgeon, leading the effort to secure a posthumous Presidential pardon for his father and civil rights leader, Marcus Garvey

     

    Jamaica Marcus Garvey
    FILE – In this Aug. 1922 file photo, Marcus Garvey is shown in a military uniform as the “Provisional President of Africa” during a parade on the opening day of the annual Convention of the Negro Peoples of the World at Lenox Avenue in Harlem, New York City. A century ago, Garvey helped spark movements from African nationalist independence to American civil rights to self-sufficiency in black commerce. Jamaican students in every grade from kindergarten through high school have began studying the teachings of the 1920-era black nationalist leader in a new mandatory civics program in schools across this predominantly black country of 2.8 million people. (AP Photo/File)

     

    Marcus Garvey was born in 1887 in Jamaica. This was two years after the Berlin Conference that divided the African continent among the major European countries and 50 years after the end of the slave trade. Garvey’s purposeful goal was to redeem African humanity and reconstruct African civilization. He launched the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League in 1914.

    During my father’s lifetime, which ended at age 53 in 1940, Marcus Garvey gathered millions of followers worldwide and was the forerunner of the Civil Rights Movement and an anti-colonial champion in the Caribbean and Africa. Along the way, he influenced ground-breakers who would become historic figures across Africa including Kwame Nkrumah (who led Ghana to independence and served as the first Prime Minister and President), Jomo Kenyatta (who led Kenya to independence and was the first President and Prime Minister), Sam Nujoma (who served three terms as President of Namibia), and Nnamdi Azikiwe (a leader in modern Nigerian nationalism), and Nelson Mandela who is revered and beloved all over the world. Just as importantly, in the U.S., Garvey influenced our historic social justice and civil rights leaders, Malcolm X Shabazz and Martin Luther King, Jr.

    Marcus Garvey is honored across the globe with statues, streets and parks named after him, multiple volumes of books written about his ideas, work and dedication to the liberation of people of African ancestry.  He is the first national hero of Jamaica and is the only Black leader honored by the Organization of American States. He was named by a leading British academic one of the fifty greatest political thinkers of all time. Yet, almost 100 years after a grave miscarriage of justice, he is still considered a criminal in the U.S.

    Here’s what happened and why it’s time to reverse it.

    Marcus Garvey led a movement, which espoused Black pride and Black self-reliance, economic independence and Black unity. These same ideas and actions today would be admired and supported as peaceful, positive and forward-thinking. Not so in the 1920s when the goal of African independence alienated him from many who favored the status quo. This included the very powerful J. Edgar Hoover who targeted Marcus Garvey as his prominence continued to grow as the major leader of the African American community.

    During the entire month of August 1920, Marcus Garvey’s U.N.I.A.-ACL organization held its first international convention in New York City. An estimated 25,000 Black people attended the opening of the convention held at Madison Square Garden. They came from all over the world and delegations from 25 African countries were in attendance. They deliberated for the entire month of August and promulgated the Declaration of the Rights of the Negro People of the World as well as a structure for the international unity for African people.

    Marcus Garvey was an innovative entrepreneur and began the Black Star Line Shipping Company created to facilitate the transportation of goods and people throughout the African global Diaspora. It was for this initiative that J. Edgar Hoover charged Marcus Garvey and three others with conspiracy to defraud. The fact that Marcus Garvey was the only one found guilty, and not the 3 others, is the real proof that this was all about his politics and not the truth. Through a trial replete with perjury, judicial misconduct and the evidence of an empty envelope, Hoover achieved his aim with Marcus Garvey serving 2 ½ years in federal prison in Atlanta, being deported, never permitted to return to the U.S.

    Over the years much has been discovered and written about the nefarious tactics of Hoover, but it’s been almost 100 years and nothing has been done about the grave miscarriage of justice for Marcus Garvey.

    The legacy of my father, Marcus Garvey, is a remarkable one as the foremost Pan Africanist of the first half of the 20th century. Today, his ideas and leadership are embraced, praised and honored, yet a cloud of criminality tarnishes his legacy, which is why a posthumous Presidential pardon is necessary.

    Justice has been delayed but it should not be denied. The time is now.