Greene County Democrat

Category: history

  • Under Trump, unemployment rate rises for Black workers

    By Freddie Allen (Managing Editor, NNPA Newswire)

    blackmanjobless
     Black man who has lost his job
    During President Donald Trump’s first full month in office, the Black unemployment rate rose as the White unemployment rate fell, according to the latest jobs report.
    Key employment indicators show that Black workers lost ground in February. The unemployment rate for Black workers increased from 7.7 percent in January to 8.1 percent in February. The labor force participation rate, which is the share of the population that is employed or looking for work, ticked down from 62.4 percent to 62.3 percent in February. The employment-population ratio, which is the share of the population that has jobs, also declined for Black workers from 57.5 percent to 57.3 percent in February.
    Meanwhile, the White unemployment rate inched closer to 4 percent, decreasing from 4.3 percent in January to 4.1 percent in February. The labor force participation rate and the employment-population ratio for White workers also improved.
    The jobless rate for White men 20 years-old and over dipped below 4 percent in February (3.8 percent). Even though the labor force participation rate for White men slipped from 72.1 percent to 72 percent, the employment-population ratio for White men increased from 69.2 percent in January to 69.3 percent last month.
    The unemployment rate for White women 20 years-old and over decreased from 3.9 percent in January to 3.7 percent in February. The labor force participation rate and the employment-population ratio for White women also showed gains in February, which indicates that White women were able to join the labor market and find work at higher rates last month compared to January.
    Black men fared worse than other adult groups in the job market last month. The unemployment rate for Black men over 20 years-old increased from 7.3 percent in January to 7.8 percent in February. The labor force participation rate slipped from 68.1 percent in January to 67.8 percent in February. The employment-population ratio also declined, falling from 63.1 percent to 62.5 percent in February, the biggest decline for any adult group that month.
    Not only did the unemployment rate for both Black men and women 20 years-old and over move in the opposite direction to their White counterparts, the share of Black men and women that looked for jobs and found work decreased from January to February.
    Before his inauguration in January, President Donald Trump often questioned the Labor Department’s monthly jobs report, but when the latest report was released on March 10, White House officials expressed their enthusiasm about the results.
    During the press briefing after February’s jobs report was released, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer was asked if President Trump believed that February’s jobs report was accurate. Spicer answered, “[President Trump] said to quote him very clearly, ‘They may have been phony in the past, but it’s very real now.”Laughter was heard audibly in the White House Press Briefing Room.
    Even as the White House appeared to be claiming another victory on the jobs front, Ben White, the chief economic correspondent for POLITICO and a CNBC contributor noted that February’s big jobs number was very similar to 2016 and 2015. “Hard to see any Trump bump in these numbers. Nearly identical to last two Febs. Feb. 2015: 238K Feb 2016: 237K Feb. 2017: 235K,” White tweeted. Others said that February’s jobs report was just a continuation of President Obama’s policies.
    In a statement about the latest jobs report, Michael Madowitz, an economist for the Center for American Progress, said that the current Labor market trends originating in the Obama years continued this month, with 235,000 jobs added and the unemployment rate decreasing slightly to 4.7 percent.
    “Since the employment recovery began in February 2010, we’ve added nearly 16 million jobs, and the steady tightening of the labor market has finally started to deliver wage growth for workers, increasing 2.8 percent over the past year,” Madowitz said in the statement. “These statistics show that the economy has continued to build on the foundation and success of the past few years and tell the story of the economy far more accurately than the Trump administration’s focus on the 30 large companies in the Dow.”
    Madowitz continued: “In his first 49 days in office, President Donald Trump has discussed loosening oversight in financial markets, which may force the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates to prevent financial bubbles. Rolling back protections, updating overtime standards, and endangering Americans’ retirement savings have delighted Trump’s Wall Street and corporate base but are cold comfort for the American worker.”
    In a statement about the February’s jobs report, Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.) said that President Trump inherited a growing economy from his predecessor. “President Trump claimed he was handed ‘a mess’ by the Obama Administration, but we know that is not accurate,” said Scott. “Under President Obama the unemployment rate was cut in half while GDP and median income rose.”
    Scott quickly pivoted to the embattled Affordable Care Act (ACA), adding that the Republican bill to repeal and replace the ACA would cause millions to lose their insurance, force families to pay more for fewer protections, defund Planned Parenthood, and give huge tax cuts to people in the top 1 percent.
    Scott concluded: “[The Republicans] have gambled with families’ health care as they continue to undermine the Affordable Care Act and the insurance Marketplaces. They have put forward policy ideas that would weaken consumer protections and increase costs for families under ‘Trumpcare.’ Working families deserve better. Congressional Republicans and President Trump must change their course and actually begin working on solutions to build an economy that benefits all of America’s working families.”

  • Republicans say Trump should apologize : FBI confirms Trump lied about Obama ‘wire tapping’ charge

    presobamaandtrumpinovaloffice-2

    Then President Obama meets with President-elect Trump in preparation for transition.

     

    By Hazel Trice Edney
    (TriceEdneyWire) – FBI Director James B. Comey has essentially confirmed what Democrats, Republicans and much of the general public already knew. That is that President Donald B. Trump lied on former President Barack Obama when he claimed, in a March 4 tweet, that Obama ordered a wiretap of Trump Tower during Trump’s campaign for the presidency.
    “With respect to the president’s tweets, I have no information that supports those tweets…We have looked carefully inside the FBI,” Comey testified during a House Intelligence Committee Monday.
    Comey said the U. S. Department of Justice, headed by Trump appointee Attorney General Jeff Sessions, asked him to state that the Justice Department also knows nothing of any such wiretaps.
    In four consecutive tweets on March 4, Trump falsely accused former President Obama of the wiretapping:

    The first tweet at 6:35 am: “Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my “wires tapped” in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!”
    The second tweet at 6:49 am: “Is it legal for a sitting President to be “wire tapping” a race for president prior to an election? Turned down by court earlier. A NEW LOW!”
    The third tweet at 6:52 am: “I’d bet a good lawyer could make a great case out of the fact that President Obama was tapping my phones in October, just prior to Election!”
    The third tweet at 7:02 am: “How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!”

    The false statements are not unusual for Trump – especially when it comes to President Obama. For nearly his entire presidency, Trump falsely claimed he was not born in the U. S. Even after Obama presented his birth certificate proving he was born in Hawaii, Trump still persisted. In other untruths, Trump also claimed to have seen thousands of Muslims celebrating the terrorist attacks on Sept. l1, 2001; and he claimed that millions of people voted illegally in the 2017 presidential election.
    But the latest accusation against Obama was particularly egregious because Trump – with no clear reason – falsely accused his predecessor of a high crime. It was also odd given that Obama and Trump appeared to have gotten along so well during the transition period with Trump calling Obama a “very good man”.
    Obama immediately responded to the false accusation through a statement from his spokesman Kevin Lewis.
    “A cardinal rule of the Obama Administration was that no White House official ever interfered with any independent investigation led by the Department of Justice,” Lewis said in a statement. “As part of that practice, neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen…Any suggestion otherwise is simply false.”
    Civil rights leaders have been oddly silent on the Trump accusation against Obama. It will likely be brought up as members of the Congressional Black Caucus meets with the president March 22. But Republicans, interviewed by CNN leading up to Comey’s statement, said Trump clearly owes Obama an apology.
    “I would retract the words if I were in his shoes. I think he should retract those words. To me I would apologize. I think it would be appropriate to do so,” said Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.)
    “It never hurts to say you’re sorry. I think that goes for this situation,” says Rep. Bill Hurd (R-Texas).
    “Unless you can produce some pretty compelling proof, then I think President Obama is owed an apology in that regard,” said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.).
    But the Trump administration says it will not apologize. White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters Monday that the President will not apologize. He said, “This is still ongoing.”

  • Revised ban on immigrants is ‘catastrophic’, critics charge

     

    ban protest

     

    (TriceEdneyWire.com/Global Information Network) – A revised travel ban by the Trump administration is already in trouble with a leading aid agency, with the travel industry, and with the Nigerian government which has urged its citizens to postpone making trips to the U.S. without “compelling or essential reasons.”

    The new travel ban, which still targets majority-Muslim countries, slightly modifies an earlier order that sparked chaos at airports across the country as travelers – even those with green cards – were denied entry by local officers.

    One of the harsher critics of the new ban, the head of the NY-based International Rescue Committee, labeled it an “historic assault on refugee resettlement to the United States, and a really catastrophic cut at a time there are more refugees around the world than ever before.”

    “There is there is no national security justification for this ‘catastrophic’ cut in refugee admissions,” declared David Miliband, adding that the ban singles out “the most vulnerable, most vetted population that is entering the United States.”

    The IRC provides humanitarian aid in five African countries, six Middle Eastern countries, six Asian countries, three European countries, and 22 cities in the U.S.

    Trump’s latest order suspends the U.S. refugee program for 120 days, though refugees already formally scheduled for travel by the State Department will be allowed entry. When the suspension is lifted, the number of refugees allowed into the U.S. will be capped at 50,000 for fiscal year 2017.

    But the new and higher bars to entry to the U.S. have the tourism industry biting its nails. Travel analytics firm ForwardKeys tallied the fall-off in major tourism-dependent U.S. cities as 6.5 percent in the eight days after President Donald Trump’s initial travel ban was announced on Jan. 27th.

    In New York City, analysts foresee some 300,000 fewer visitors from abroad this year than in 2016, a 2.1 percent dip. It’s the first time for such a fall-off since 2008, says NYC & Company, New York’s tourism arm.

    Even some African countries are sounding the alarm. In Nigeria, for example, special presidential adviser Abike Dabiri-Erewa, urged Nigerians to consider postponing visits to the U.S.

    “In the last few weeks, the office has received a few cases of Nigerians with valid multiple-entry US visas being denied entry and sent back to Nigeria,” she said. “In such cases, affected persons were sent back immediately on the next available flight and their visas were cancelled.”

    Planned trips should be delayed, she advised, barring compelling or essential reasons, until there is clarity on the new immigration policy from Washington.

    The latest action by the Trump administration could spell trouble for the 2.1 million African immigrants living in the U.S., 327,000 of whom were born in Nigeria, according to the Pew Research Center, published in February.

    GLOBAL INFORMATION NETWORK creates and distributes news and feature articles on current affairs in Africa to media outlets, scholars, students and activists in the U.S. and Canada. Our goal is to introduce important new voices on topics relevant to Americans, to increase the perspectives available to readers in North America and to bring into their view information about global issues that are overlooked or under-reported by mainstream media.

  • Hate groups increase for second consecutive year as Trump electrifies radical right

     

    Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Southern Poverty Law Center

    (TriceEdneyWire.com) – The number of hate groups in the United States rose for a second year in a row in 2016 as the radical right was energized by the candidacy of Donald Trump, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) annual census of hate groups and other extremist organizations.

    The most dramatic growth was the near-tripling of anti-Muslim hate groups – from 34 in 2015 to 101 last year. However fear has grown among many racial and ethnic minority groups. In a post-election SPLC survey of 10,000 educators, 90 percent said the climate at their schools had been negatively affected by the campaign. Eighty percent described heightened anxiety and fear among students, particularly immigrants, Muslims and African-Americans. Numerous teachers reported the use of slurs, derogatory language and extremist symbols in their classrooms.

    The growth has been accompanied by a rash of crimes targeting Muslims, including an arson that destroyed a mosque in Victoria, Texas, just hours after the Trump administration announced an  executive order suspending travel from some predominantly Muslim countries. The latest FBI statistics show that hate crimes against Muslims grew by 67 percent in 2015, the year in which Trump launched his campaign.

    The report, contained in the Spring 2017 issue of the SPLC’s Intelligence Report, includes the Hate Map showing the names, types and locations of hate groups across the country.

    The SPLC found that the number of hate groups operating in 2016 rose to 917 – up from 892 in 2015. The number is 101 shy of the all-time record set in 2011, but high by historic standards.

    “2016 was an unprecedented year for hate,” said Mark Potok, senior fellow and editor of the Intelligence Report. “The country saw a resurgence of white nationalism that imperils the racial progress we’ve made, along with the rise of a president whose policies reflect the values of white nationalists. In Steve Bannon, these extremists think they finally have an ally who has the president’s ear.”

    The increase in anti-Muslim hate was fueled by Trump’s incendiary rhetoric, including his campaign pledge to bar Muslims from entering the United States, as well as anger over terrorist attacks such as the June massacre of 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando.

    The overall number of hate groups likely understates the real level of organized hatred in America as a growing number of extremists operate mainly online and are not formally affiliated with hate groups.

    Aside from its annual census of extremist groups, the SPLC found that Trump’s rhetoric reverberated across the nation in other ways. In the first 10 days after his election, the SPLC documented 867 bias-related incidents, including more than 300 that targeted immigrants or Muslims.

    In contrast to the growth of hate groups, antigovernment “Patriot” groups saw a 38 percent decline – plummeting from 998 groups in 2015 to 623 last year. Composed of armed militiamen and others who see the federal government as their enemy, the “Patriot” movement over the past few decades has flourished under Democratic administrations but declined dramatically when President George W. Bush occupied the White House.

    The SPLC also released an in-depth profile of the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), an anti-LGBT hate group. Leaders of the legal advocacy organization and its affiliated lawyers have regularly demonized LGBT people, falsely linking them to pedophilia, calling them “evil” and a threat to children and society, and blaming them for the “persecution of devout Christians.” The group also has supported the criminalization of homosexuality in several countries.

     

  • Rep. Sewell Statement on CBO Analysis of GOP Repeal Bill

    terri-sewell

     

    Washington, D.C. – Today, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released projections of how many Americans would gain or lose insurance under the Republican proposal to repeal the Affordable Care Act as well as cost projections for the proposed bill. The CBO analysis comes nearly a week after the Ways & Means Committee considered and voted to advance the Republican repeal bill. Congresswoman Terri A. Sewell voted against the repeal bill in committee.
    “The CBO report released today makes one thing clear: the Republican repeal bill will cost American lives and leave millions uninsured,” said Rep. Terri Sewell. “Under this bill, 14 million Americans would lose their insurance within the next year. Over the next decade, that number would rise to an unsustainable 24 million uninsured Americans. Our healthcare infrastructure, from our rural hospitals to our network of family physicians, cannot withstand that kind of blow to health coverage. I believe that all Americans have a right to affordable healthcare, but this legislation turns healthcare into a privilege. For families in my district, the Republican repeal bill means more expensive coverage with fewer protections. We cannot ask working Americans to go broke, bankrupt, or do without healthcare.”
    Today’s report from the CBO and Joint Committee on Taxation shows that by 2018, five million fewer people would be covered under Medicaid, six million fewer Americans would be covered in the individual market, and a total of 14 million more Americans would be without insurance. The CBO report estimates that in 2018 and 2019, average premiums for single policyholders in the non-group market would rise 15 to 20 percent under the GOP repeal bill.
    In addition, the report shows that low-income seniors will see premium increases of $12,900, while the average 40 year old will see an average premium increase of $700. CBO projects that the actuarial value of all plans will decrease under the AHCA.

  • Greene County Board of Education hires CSFO

    Katrina H

     

    At a call meeting held Monday, March 13, 2017, the Greene County Board of Education approved a three year employment contract for Mrs. Katrina Hudson Sewell of York, AL to serve as Chief School Financial Officer (CSFO) for the school system. Mrs. Sewell is scheduled to begin work in the central office on March 27 following a two-week notice to her current employer, the Pickens County Board of Education.
    Mrs. Katrina Sewell, a native of Demopolis, AL, received her Bachelor and Master Degrees in Business Administration from Faulkner University in Montgomery. She has served in various capacities in public education, including CSFO for the Sumter County School System for three years. Her work experiences include Accounts Payable Clerk, Business Marketing Teacher, Business Education Teacher, Information Technology Instructor and Career Coach.
    Sewell was selected from the five finalists applicants selected to be interviewed by the board. She noted that she is in the process of completing her training for state certification as a CSFO and will continue that preparation in her position with the Greene County School System.
    According to the State Codes of Alabama, the Chief School Financial Officer is directly responsible to the school board, but must work cooperatively with the school superintendent who serves as her supervisor on a day-to-day basis. The CSFO will in turn supervise at least three other central office personnel.
    Ms. Sewell expressed a desire to secure a work position which meets her training and experience qualifications and would allow her to remain in this region.

  • ‘voter fraud is a lie, voter suppression is alive’ Rev. Barber: “We want full restoration of the Voting Rights Act now!”

    By: John Zippert,  Co-Publisher

    Amid the celebration and commemoration at this weekend’s Bridge Crossing Jubilee in Selma, Alabama, celebrating the 52nd anniversary of the “Bloody Sunday March” in 1965, there was a demand for “Full Restoration of the Voting Rights Act” by Rev. William Barber of the North Carolina Repairers of the Breach and Forward Together Movement. Rev. Barber’s demand was echoed by other speakers and was the central issue in many of the workshops and programs of the Jubilee.
    In addition to the workshops, there was a parade, golf tournament, dinners, a unity breakfast, street festival, and the march reenactment on Sunday afternoon. Ten thousand or more marchers crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge behind a host of local and national leaders, including: Rev. Jesse Jackson of PUSH, Charles Steele of SCLC, Rev. Barber, Faya Rose Toure, Senator Hank Sanders, Rev. Mark Thompson of Sirius 127 Radio and many others. The Masons of Alabama turned out in force and in uniform, to participate in the march.
    The weekend culminated in Monday’s “Slow-Ride from Selma to Montgomery” with a caravan of 35 vehicles including a Greene County School bus, carrying the members of the Eutaw High Ninth Grade Academy. The caravan was met by local Montgomery leaders for a rally on the steps of the State Capitol.
    Prior to the re-enactment march, Attorney Faya Rose Toure pointed out that the Edmund Pettus Bridge was named for an Alabama Klu Klux Klan leader and that the name should be changed to honor Ms. Amelia Boyton Robinson and the Voting Rights Foot-soldiers who won the 1965 VRA.
    Rev. William Barber spoke many times, as ketnote for the Sunday morning breakfast, at Brown’s Chapel Church before the march reenactment, on a national radio broadcast from the Dallas County Courthouse on Sunday evening and at the rally at the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery at the end of the slow-ride.

    Rev. Barber made similar points in each speech. At the breakfast, we invoked the martyrs of the civil and voting rights movement – Dr. King, Jimmie Lee Jackson, Jonathan Daniels, James Reid, Viola Luizzo, and un-named others, whose blood he said was crying out to people today to continue the work of restoring the Voting Rights Act, fighting voter suppression in all its forms, and building a more beloved community involving Blacks, Whites, Latinos and all religious faiths.
    He said he had come to Selma, ”not for the nostalgia of history but to listen for the ‘blood’ that was shed and soaked into the concrete of the bridge and the wooden pews of the churches.” Barber said that America was headed by an egotistical narsisistic man, “but this is not the first time that a racist was in the White House. Steve Bannon is not the first white Supremacist to be in high places. Trump is not the first President to hold these views. Many of his predacessors felt the same way.”
    “On June 25, 2013”, Barber said, “the U. S. Supreme Court in the Holder vs. Shelby County case, overturned Section 4 and nullified Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Within an hour of the destruction of pre-clearence of voting changes in the Shelby decision, Texas approved a voter ID law and other changes; two months later, North Carolina passed voter suppression laws.
    Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and other Southern states also passed voter ID and other voter suppression measures. Voter fraud is a lie, voter suppression is alive.”
    “Twenty-one states adopted 47 regressive voting changes within a year of the Shelby decision, The 2016 Presidential election was the first in half a century without the protection of the Voting Rights Act.
    868 fewer polling places were allowed in Black and Brown communities around the nation. In the 25 Presidential debates, both Republican and Democratic, no mention was made of the issue of voter suppression in our communities,” said Rev. Barber.
    “Long before Russia interfered in our elections, voter suppression had hacked and distorted the system,” said Barber. He pointed out that in Wisconsin 300,000 voters were disenfranchised due to the voter ID requirements and Trump defeated Hillary by 20,000 votes in that state.
    Senator Hank Sanders spoke to the problems of voter suppression, voter ID, Legislative gerrymandering in Alabama, Packing and stacking Black voters in majority Black districts. He also recounted the history of now Attorney General Jeff Sessions role in initiating voter suppression in Alabama with voter fraud trials of civil rights activists.
    Rev. Barber said, “ the 11 former Confederate states have 171 electoral votes, you only need 99 more to have the 270 needed to win the electoral college. These states have 26 U. S. senators, the extremists need only 25 more Senators to control the Senate which they are doing now. They have the House of Representatives, statehouses, county courthouses, we have work to do to fully restore the Voting Rights Act.”
    As part of the evening radio broadcast and rally at the Dallas County Courthouse, Rev. Barber displayed maps, which showed the concentration of poverty, child poverty, low wages-right-to-work states, states that did not expand Medicaid, overlapped with the states that adopted new voter suppression measures. Most of these maps showed concentration of these problems in the rural South. Rev. Barber also displayed a map of states and areas with a concentration of protestant Evangelical Christians and once again the overlap was clear. He called this a “mis-teaching of faith and a false interpretation of the Bible”.
    At the rally in Montgomery, speaker after speaker blasted the voter suppression, racial gerrymandering and limits to voting by the people. Rev. Barber said, ”We must get ready for a 100 days of disruption and civil disobedience in our state houses and in Congress to work for full restoration of the Voting Rights Act. Different state organizations should be preparing to go to Washington, D. C. and non-violently disrupt the process qnd win back our full voting rights.

  • Rep. Sewell Statement on GOP Health Bill

    terri-sewell
    Washington, D.C. – On Monday, Republicans in Congress released legislation to replace the Affordable Care Act. The GOP health bill would make large cuts to Medicaid, destabilize Medicare by reducing funding for the Medicare Trust Fund, and increase health costs for working and low-income families. Estimates suggest that 357,000 Alabamians are at risk of losing their coverage if the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is repealed.
    “For my constituents, access to affordable healthcare is a life or death issue,” said Rep. Terri Sewell (D-AL). “After seven years of calling for the Affordable Care Act’s repeal, it is unconscionable that the best Republican leadership has to offer is a plan that cuts Medicaid, destabilizes Medicare, and takes insurance away from millions of hardworking Americans. In fact, estimates suggest that 357,000 Alabamians are at risk of losing their coverage if we repeal the ACA. Our access to care is a fundamental right, not a privilege. Protecting care for seniors, disabled Americans, and working and low-income families goes to the heart of who we are as a country. We cannot settle for a health plan that leaves millions of Americans without the coverage they need.”
    Studies show that the GOP health plan would increase costs for the average enrollee by $1,542 if the bill were in effect today. At the same time, the proposed bill eliminates requirements for insurance companies to cover preventative care, and makes it possible for insurers to discriminate against seniors. By cutting Medicaid and reducing health assistance to low-income families, the health bill would reduce revenue for rural hospitals nationwide, 700 of which have been labeled as financially at risk.
    Patients across Alabama’s 7th District would lose assistance under the GOP health plan. In Jefferson County, residents’ health coverage tax credits will be 33% lower than they were under the ACA.
    Despite concerns raised by both Republicans and Democrats, House Republicans plan to move forward with consideration of the health bill in the Ways and Means Committee and Energy and Commerce Committee on Wednesday, March 8. Rep. Sewell is a member of the Ways and Means Committee and will participate in tomorrow’s markup of the GOP health bill.

  • Black Hollywood wins big at Oscars

    Big Black Oscar Wins: “Moonlight,” Viola Davis, Mahershala Ali Take Home Oscars
    By Lauren Victoria Burke (NNPA Newswire Contributor)

    Mahershala Ali

     Mahershala Ali won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role in “Moonlight.”

    During an unexpected made-for-Hollyood moment, “Moonlight,” a film directed by African American Director Barry Jenkins, took the award for Best Picture over favorites such as “La La Land” and “Hidden Figures.” The film is a complex coming of age story of an African American man that follows his journey from boyhood into manhood.
    Moonlight’s unexpected win and the bizarre way that the announcement played out on live television, will go down in Academy Awards’ history and will forever be a part of that legacy that spans 89 years.
    After actor and presenter Warren Beatty was given the wrong envelope backstage for the final award of the night for Best Picture, he and fellow Best Picture presenter actress Faye Dunaway announced that “La La Land,” had won the coveted award. As La La Land’s producers began making their acceptance speeches, representatives from the Oscars rushed on stage to correct the error in real time announcing that “Moonlight” actually won the evening’s biggest honor.
    In stunning fashion, “La La Land producer Jordan Horowitz held up the card printed with the name of Best Picture award winner “Moonlight” for the audience and the TV cameras. Horowitz summoned the film’s director and producers to the stage.
    The evening was a triumph for Black Hollywood. While last year’s Oscars were criticized for the lack of diversity among the nominees for the Academy’s top honors, this year’s Oscars ended in several big wins for Black actors and Black films.
    Mahershala Ali became the first Muslim actor to win an Academy Award with his victory for his role in “Moonlight.” Viola Davis won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role in the film adaption of playwright August Wilson’s play “Fences.” The son of Marian Wright Edelman, Ezra Edelman won an Oscar in the Best Documentary Feature category for “OJ: Made in America.”
    Although “Hidden Figures” was nominated in four categories including Best Picture, the film didn’t win a single award.
    Another moment to remember was a victory for actor Casey Affleck for Best Actor in “Manchester by the Sea,” over Denzel Washington, who starred in “Fences.”
    Washington has a Best Actor Oscar and Best Supporting Actor Oscar for “Training Day” in 2002 and “Glory” in 1990, respectively. If comments on social media are a guide, many feel Washington was robbed of an Oscar in 1993 after he did not win for his role in Spike Lee’s film “Malcolm X,” as well as not being awarded for his role as Troy in “Fences.”

  • Ben Carson sworn-in as Trump’s only Black cabinet pick

    By Stacy M. Brown NNPA Newswire Contributor
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    Dr. Ben Carson (left) was sworn in as the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development on Thursday, March 2. Carson’s wife along with his 5-year-old granddaughter, Tesora held the Bible. (Shevry Lassiter/The Washington Informer)

    The swearing-in of all the primary members of President Donald Trump’s cabinet is just about complete.

    Most of Trump’s cabinet—from Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross—are rich, White and male.

    On Thursday, March 2, retired neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson broke the mold with his swearing-in as Housing and Urban Development secretary, officially becoming the only African-American in Trump’s cabinet.

    The former GOP presidential candidate was confirmed by a 58-41 vote, leaving just four of Trump’s 22 cabinet-level nominees still unsworn.

    “Right now, our country is the patient and it’s not a Democrat or a Republican patient..It’s an American patient,” Carson said at his swearing-in as his wife, Lacena and granddaughter Tesora held the Bible. “We have a duty to use the gifts that God has given all of us in order to heal that patient.”

    Carson, 65, was born into an impoverished Detroit family, but ultimately became a popular neurosurgeon who ran for president last year winning the

    In January, he vowed to begin his job at HUD by going on a listening tour before developing any long-term plans for the department, which has more than 8,000 employees and a $50 billion budget.

    In February, during Black History Month, Carson joined Trump for a tour of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture where the president said Carson would work very closely with him.

    “HUD has a meaning far beyond housing,” Trump said. “If properly done, it’s a meaning that’s as big as anything there is.”

    Carson, whose mother at times received food stamps to provide for her family, grew up surrounded by some of the housing assistance programs he will now oversee.

    “The New York Times” reported that, rather than embrace the programs that once sustained his family and the families around him, Carson adopted standard Republican beliefs that too much government help—both in desegregating neighborhoods and in lifting people from poverty—can discourage people from working hard.

    Carson recently had to correct statements which he made that suggested Black people who were brought involuntarily to be enslaved were equated with other immigrants seeking opportunity.

    Carson was awarded a scholarship to Yale University, and at 33, he was named director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center. He later became an author and a philanthropist supporting scholarships for young, often impoverished students.

    “Housing discrimination continues to be a significant problem in this country, unfairly limiting people’s choices about where to live,” Lisa Rice, executive vice president of the National Fair Housing Alliance, said in a statement. “We look to Secretary Carson to marshal the resources of the department he leads to combat this problem, and to fight all forms of housing discrimination.”