The Greene County Democrat

Category: Newswire

  • Newswire : Trump says he’ll deploy military to states if they don’t stop violent protests

    By Alana Wise, NPR

    Police guarding White House during Saturday night’s demonstrations


    Escalating his rhetoric during a period of roiling national crises, President Trump on Monday threatened to deploy the U.S. military to cities or states that don’t take “necessary” actions to halt violent protests, saying the armed forces will “quickly solve the problem for them.”
    Trump’s Rose Garden remarks came as just across the street, law enforcement officers deployed tear gas and shot rubber bullets to forcefully disperse peaceful protesters. Washington, D.C., had set a curfew Monday of 7 p.m. ET.
    The protesters were removed from the Lafayette Square area across from the White House, apparently to clear the way for the president to walk to St. John’s Church, where he posed briefly for photographers, holding a Bible. Parts of the church compound were damaged by rioters on Sunday night.
    In a statement, Judd Deere, the White House’s deputy press secretary, said: “The perimeter was expanded to help enforce the 7 p.m. curfew in the same area where rioters attempted to burn down one of our nation’s most historic churches the night before. Protesters were given three warnings by the U.S. Park Police.”
    Trump’s remarks, which lasted less than seven minutes, came after days of protests in dozens of cities across the U.S. following the death of George Floyd, a black man who died in police custody in Minneapolis a week ago.
    During the remarks, Trump declared himself “a law-and-order president” and “ally of all peaceful protesters,” but he called violent unrest that has accompanied many demonstrations “acts of domestic terror.”
    “These are not acts of peaceful protests. These are acts of domestic terror. The destruction of innocent life, and the spilling of innocent blood, is an offense to humanity and a crime against God,” Trump said.
    He added: “Our country always wins. That is why I am taking immediate presidential action to stop the violence.”
    Trump said he had mobilized “thousands and thousands” of “heavily armed” military personnel to put an end to the protests, which were born from criticisms of excessive force by law enforcement.
    It was not immediately clear, however, what precise changes might be in store for the personnel who have been responding to the demonstrations across the country.
    The Justice Department said in a statement that beginning Monday night, it had deployed all of its law enforcement components and is coordinating with the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security and local authorities to “maximize federal security presence throughout the District [of Columbia].”
    Threatening state governors who have declined to deploy the National Guard, Trump said he would dispatch the U.S. military to “quickly solve the problem for them.”
    After the stop at St. John’s Church, Trump and a retinue of advisers and staffers then returned to the secure enclave within the White House complex.
    Nation in crisis
    Protests, which have at times broken out into violence and looting, continued from the weekend into Monday, following the video-recorded death of Floyd, who died after a white officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.
    Protesters — many of whom have worn masks because of the coronavirus pandemic — have demanded that the officers involved be held accountable for Floyd’s death.
    Derek Chauvin, the officer who knelt on Floyd’s neck, has been arrested and charged with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. Three other officers who were involved in the incident have been fired but have not been charged.
    Several major cities, including Washington, D.C., were placed under curfews following the unrest. Trump’s walk to the nearby church, which he does not typically visit, technically violated the District of Columbia’s Monday curfew for a little time.
    The National Guard has been deployed in many states, and the president on Monday called for governors to “dominate” in their states to put an end to the protests.
    His remarks Monday stand in stark contrast to the position he took toward heavily armed majority-white protesters last month, who stormed the Michigan statehouse in defiance of stay-at-home orders to demand a reopening of the state economy amid the coronavirus pandemic.
    Trump described those protesters as “very good people” and called on the governor to “give a little” to appease them.
    The protests against police violence come against the backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic, which has caused more than 100,000 deaths in the U.S., with black Americans disproportionately affected.

  • Newswire : The killing of George Floyd sparks continued protests, outrage across the nation

    By Hamil R. Harris

    George Floyd and Policeman Derek Chauvin with knee on neck of George Floyd

    (TriceEdneyWire.com) – Minneapolis Police Department Officer Derek Chauvin relaxed as he was suffocating George Floyd. His hands were in his pockets. He was looking around and his knee was on the neck of the handcuffed man for nearly nine minutes until he died.
    It didn’t matter that the 46-year- old Black man cried out, “I can’t breathe!” and “They are trying to kill me!” Chauvin didn’t move. And when paramedics finally arrived, there was no attempt to perform CPR on Floyd.
    And even though Chauvin was arrested and charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter, it is too little too late. The incident has ignited protests, fires and destruction in cities across America from Minneapolis to Atlanta Georgia and from Los Angeles to New York City. Even the Corona Virus has taken a back seat to this incident as civil rights leaders, activists and politics speak about the horrendous act against Floyd.
    In a tweet, President Obama said the Floyd case calls on the nation to “create a ‘new normal,’ in which the legacy of bigotry and unequal treatment no longer infects our institutions and our hearts.”
    NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson called the murder of Floyd “an unspeakable tragedy,” and while some news outlets have focused on violence after his death, Johnson said, “The uprising spreading across the country is fueled by systematic racial issues that have been ingrained in the fabric of this country for decades.”
    National Urban League President/CEO Marc Morial said in a statement, “Minneapolis has erupted in outrage. The primal scream of anguish – what Martin Luther King, Jr., called “the language of the unheard” – reverberates across the nation. We pray for those who have taken to the streets, that they will refrain from violence – and for the police who are responding, that they exercise restraint and de-escalate tensions.”
    The officers who participated in the deadly assault of George Floyd were fired within 24 hours, and shortly after the National Urban League and the Urban League of the Twin Cities demanded their names, have been identified. They are Derek Chauvin, Thomas Lane, Tou Thao and J. Alexander Kueng.
    “These men no longer deserve the benefit of the doubt. Their word can no long be trusted. Their records – which, in the case of Chauvin and Thao, include a disturbing number of use-of-force incidents and civilian complaints – must be thoroughly examined for evidence of the racism and inhumanity they displayed during George Floyd’s deadly assault,” Morial said.
    Rev. Al Sharpton said on his MSNBC show that he will go to Minneapolis to preach Floyd’s funeral. He interviewed Floyd’s brother who talked about the conversations he had with President Donald Trump, Vice-President Pence and former Vice-President Joe Biden.
    Philonise Floyd said that he told Biden, “I never had to beg a man before but I asked [Biden] could he please, please get justice for my brother, please. Because I need it, I just don’t want to see him on a shirt like those other guys. Nobody deserves that.”
    Floyd said his call with Trump was much briefer.
    “It was so fast. He didn’t give me the opportunity to even speak. It was hard. I was trying to talk to him but he just kept like pushing me off like ‘I don’t want to hear what you’re talking about.’ I just told him I want justice. I said that I can’t believe that they committed a modern-day lynching in broad daylight,” he shared.
    President Trump made comments about the incident Saturday following the historic launch of the SpaceX rocket with two astronauts aboard. It was the first manned launch in nine years.
    “Yesterday, I spoke to George’s family and expressed the sorrow of our entire nation for their loss. I stand before you as a friend and ally to every American seeking justice and peace, and I stand before you in firm opposition to anyone exploiting this tragedy to loot, rob, and menace. Healing not hatred, justice not chaos are the mission at hand,” Trump said. “I understand the pain that people are feeling. We support the right of peaceful protests and we hear their pleas, but what we are now seeing on the streets of our cities has nothing to do with the memory of George Floyd.”
    Also during the MSNBC interview, Floyd gave his thoughts about former officer Derek Chauvin and the other officers involved in the incident on nine-minute video, which shows Floyd’s brother screaming as he is dying.
    “They all need to be convicted of first-degree murder, and given the death penalty because they didn’t care about what they wanted to do with my brother. He wasn’t a person to them, he was scum. He was nothing,” he told Sharpton. “I’m hurt, my family is hurt. His kids are hurt. They will grow up without a father. Everybody is crying and in pain right now. So if they could do anything please arrest those other officers.”
    Hennepin County State’s Attorney Mike Freeman is prosecuting the case. At a recent press conference he said that his office is still investigating the case, but people in Minnesota and across the country are not waiting for him to speak out. Later in the week, Kieth Ellison, Minnesota Attorney General, who is African-American joined the prosecution.
    “Being Black in America should not be a death sentence,” said Minister Russell Pointer of the Metropolitan Church of Christ in Minneapolis. His comments were part of a Zoom forum that was out on Facebook live by the Christian Chronicle.
    From Minnesota to Washington DC, people are talking, protesting and demanding change at a moment because of the incident that has forced the nation to focus on something other than the COVID 19 pandemic.
    On Friday night people in droves walked fast to Lafayette Square in front of the White House and shouted “No Justice No Peace. There were other protests in New York, Atlanta, Denver, Los Angeles and on Saturday there protests in Baltimore that were mostly peaceful but turn violent after people starting throwing rocks in a park across from City Hall.
    President Trump and his aides have consulted with the military and authorized the use of the National Guard in certain cities, many pundits are calling wondering how will this urban crisis end anytime soon.
    But in a major speech delivered after he talked to the Floyd family, Biden said. “And once again we heard the words, and they heard them, ‘I can’t breathe’ — an act of brutality so elemental, it did more than deny one more Black man in America his civil rights and his human rights. It denied him of his very humanity. It denied him of his life, depriving George Floyd as it deprived Eric Garner of one of the things every human being must be able to do: breathe. So simple, so basic, so brutal.”
    Biden continued, “You know, the same thing happened with [Ahmaud] Arbery, the same thing happened with Breonna Taylor, the same thing with George Floyd. We’ve spoken their names aloud. We’ve cried them out in pain and in horror. We’ve chiseled them into long-suffering hearts. They’re the latest additions to the endless list of stolen potential wiped out unnecessarily. You know, it’s a list that dates back more than 400 years. Black men, Black women, Black children.”
    He concluded, “The original sin of this country still stains our nation today, and sometimes we manage to overlook it. We just push forward with the thousand other tasks in our daily life, but it’s always there, and weeks like this, we see it plainly that we’re a country with an open wound. None of us can turn away. None of us can be silent. None of us can any longer, can we hear the words ‘I can’t breathe’ and do nothing. We can’t fail victims, like what Martin Luther King called ‘’he appalling silence of good people.’”

  • Newswire : On the run, Rwanda genocide suspect, Felicien Kabuga, arrested in French hideout

    Poster for Felicien Kabuga


    May 25, 2020 (GIN) – Twenty-six years after financing the Rwandan genocide, wealthy businessman and most wanted fugitive, Felicien Kabuga, was nabbed in an upscale French hideout.
    It was a relief for prosecutors of the Rwandan Genocide tribunal who feared the 84-year-old Kabuga could die a free man. He stands accused of masterminding the slaughter of 800,000 Rwandans, mainly minority Tutsis but also political opponents among the Hutus, over a period of 100 days, from April to July 1994, in a murderous campaign of ethnic violence.
    Clues to Kabuga’s whereabouts came to light after an intelligence-sharing meeting between investigators from France, Britain, and Belgium, as well as the UN and Europe’s Europol law enforcement agency. “We realized… that the trail from his children protecting their father converged on Asnières-sur-Seine, where he lived under an assumed name,” said Col. Eric Emeraux, head of a French police unit combating crimes against humanity.
    “We also discovered one of his children was renting an apartment there.”
    Because the coronavirus lockdown had paralyzed many intelligence operations across parts of Europe, time was freed up to focus on the man accused of being the economic backer of the genocide.
    A former tea and coffee tycoon with 28 known aliases, Mr. Kabuga is alleged to have used his personal fortune to buy protection from a corrupt official in the office of Kenyan President Daniel Arap Moi.
    The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda said it had evidence that Mr. Kabuga either visited or resided in Kenya, but successive Kenyan governments allegedly refused to hand over the wanted suspect.
    “We need to know the story of his life as a fugitive, who helped and protected him, his connections to the wider diaspora and the role of his children — all this might be a by-product of the trial,” said British journalist Linda Melvern.
    Called the “preventable genocide”, the killings in Rwanda exposed a “disgraceful” failure of the international community as the U.N. ordered its blue-helmeted troops to evacuate foreigners – but not intervene to save the Tutsis from slaughter.
    Kabuga, now confined to La Sante Prison in central Paris, appeared this week in court in a wheelchair, dressed in jeans and wearing a face mask. Prosecutors are seeking his transfer to U.N. custody for trial in international courts.
    After his arrest, Valerie Mukabayire, the leader of the Rwanda widows’ group Avega, told the BBC: “Every genocide survivor is happy he is arrested. Everyone has been waiting for this news. It is a good thing that he is going to face justice.”

  • Newswire :NFL announces major steps to incentive teams to hire minorities for top posts

    By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior Correspondent
    @StacyBrownMedia


    Roger Goddell and Troy Vincent


    National Football League teams must now interview at least two minority candidates for head coaching positions under new resolutions that the league hopes will improve diversity among its 32 teams.
    In an expansion of its Rooney Rule, which had previously called on teams to interview minority candidates, the league said teams must also interview at least one minority candidate for coordinator openings and one external candidate for positions in teams’ front offices.
    “While we have seen positive strides in our coaching ranks over the years aided by the Rooney Rule, we recognize, after the last two seasons, that we can and must do more,” Commissioner Roger Goodell said during a media conference call.
    “The policy changes made today are bold and demonstrate the commitment of our ownership to increase diversity in leadership positions throughout the league.”
    Troy Vincent, the NFL’s executive vice president of football operations and second-in-command to Goodell, said the league is now in a better position to not only hire minorities and women but to retain their services.
    “What the chairman (Art Rooney II) and the commissioner did today and what the ownership voted on today has been a fight for decades to get mobility that has disproportionately affected people of color,” Vincent stated.
    “Just the ability to get an interview, you don’t get hired unless you have an interview. The mobility resolution today was significant and historic because it has been a fight for decades. That’s the foundation. Frankly, we would call that the linchpin of these inequalities. With these initiatives, the enhancement of the Rooney Rule, which is a tool; it just allows us to have a broader scope of how we look at things.”
    The new rules include a provision that begins in 2021, which states that teams will no longer restrict staff from interviewing with other clubs for “bona fide” coaching or front office positions. Goodell called the commitment to improving diversity throughout the league is “critical” for future success.
    “While we have seen positive strides in our coaching ranks over the years aided by the Rooney Rule, we recognize, after the last two seasons, that we can and must do more,” Goodell said.
    “The policy changes made today are bold and demonstrate the commitment of our ownership to increase diversity in leadership positions throughout the league.”
    Clubs also will be required to “include minorities and, or, female applicants in the interview processes for senior-level front office positions such as club president and senior executives in communications, finance, human resources, legal, football operations, sales, marketing, sponsorship, information technology, and security positions,” according to the expanded rule.
    Also, league officials stated that they would use an advisory panel to further strategies aimed at fostering an inclusive culture of opportunity both on and off the field.
    Goodell also promised to improve the league’s pipeline for minority coaching and player personnel candidates with assistance from its Bill Walsh NFL Diversity Coaching Fellowship.
    “This fight has been going on for a long time,” said Vincent, who could one day become the league’s first African American commissioner.
    “The facts are we have a broken system, and we’re looking to implement things to change the direction in where we’re going, and it’s been south. Not a gradual south but a direct south.”

  • Newswire: Black unemployment was 16.7 percent in April

    by BlackmansStreet.Today

    Black people waiting to work


    More than 20 million jobs were lost in March because of the pandemic
    It is the worst of times for blacks workers.
    The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday that the jobless rate for the blacks was 16.7 percent in April, a giant leap backward from 6.7 percent in March, as the Covid-19 pandemic caused nonfarm employment to fall by 20.5 million jobs last month.
    The overall unemployment rate was 14.7 percent in April, the highest since the Great Depression, which lasted from 1929 to 1939. The number of jobs fell sharply in all major industry sectors, particularly in leisure and hospitality.
    The seasonally adjusted jobless rate in for black men 20 and older in April was 16.1 percent, up 7.0 percent in March. The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for black women 20 and older in April was 16.4 percent, way up from 5.2 percent in March.
    BLS reported that the sharp increases reflect the Covid-19 pandemic and efforts to control it, such as furloughing workers.
    The number of individuals who work full time declined by 15 million and the number who worked part-time dropped by 7.4 million.
    Employment in the leisure and hospitality industries plummeted by 7.7 million. The jobless rate in education and health services declined by 2.5 million. Professional and business services shed 2.1 million jobs and manufacturing dropped 1.3 million jobs. Employment in the services industry declined by 1.3 million jobs and government employment dropped 900,000.
    McKinsey & Company reported that the March 14 household survey data from BLS show that racial minorities make up 20 percent of the labor force but 25 percent of the newly unemployed.
    The unemployment rate for major worker groups was 14.2 percent for whites, 14.5 percent for Asians and 18.9 percent for Hispanics, the highest rate for all racial groups.
    April’s unemployment rate is still an underestimate of the actual number of unemployed workers. It would be higher if all the people who lost their jobs had actually remained in the labor force, said Elise Gould, senior economist for the Economic Policy Institute in Washington D.C.

  • Newswire : Federal Judge rules Florida felons can vote without paying legal fees

    By Associated Press

    Florida voting booths

    Judge Robert Hinkle says the current law is unconstitutional but his ruling is likely to face Republican challenge in key battleground state
    The law in Florida requiring felons to pay legal fees as part of their sentences before regaining the vote is unconstitutional for those unable to pay, or unable to find out how much they owe, a federal judge has ruled.
    The 125-page ruling, issued by US district court Judge Robert Hinkle in Tallahassee on Sunday, involves a state law to implement a 2016 ballot measure approved by voters to automatically restore the right to vote for many felons who have completed their sentence.
    The Republican-led legislature stipulated that fines and legal fees must be paid as part of the sentence, in addition to serving any prison time.
    Hinkle has acknowledged he is unlikely to have the last word in the case, expecting the administration of Republican Governor Ron DeSantis to launch an appeal.
    The case could have deep ramifications in the crucial electoral battleground given that Florida has an estimated 774,000 disenfranchised felons who are barred because of financial obligations. Many of those felons are African Americans and statistically more likely to vote for the Democratic party. Florida was also the scene of the infamous “hanging chad” controversy in the 2000 US election.
    The judge called the Florida rules a “pay-to-vote system” that was unconstitutional when applied to felons who were otherwise eligible to vote but genuinely unable to pay the required amount.
    A further complication was how to set the exact amount in fines and other kinds of legal fees owed by felons seeking the vote. Hinkle said it was unconstitutional to bar any voter whose amount owed “could not be determined with diligence”.
    Hinkle ordered the state to require election officials to allow felons to request an advisory opinion on how much they owe, essentially placing the burden on election officials to seek that information from court systems. If there was no response within three weeks, then the applicant should not be barred from registering to vote, the ruling said.
    Hinkle said the requirement to pay fines and restitution as ordered in a sentence is constitutional for those who are able to pay if the amount can be determined.
    The case, Kelvin Jones vs Ron DeSantis, consolidates five lawsuits filed by advocates of disenfranchised felons, including the American Civil Liberties Union, the Brennan Center, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
    “This is a tremendous victory for voting rights,” Julie Ebenstein, senior staff attorney with ACLU’s voting rights project, said in a statement. “The court recognized that conditioning a person’s right to vote on their ability to pay is unconstitutional. This ruling means hundreds of thousands of Floridians will be able to rejoin the electorate and participate in upcoming elections.”
    The 2018 ballot measure, known as Amendment Four, does not apply to convicted murderers and rapists.

  • Newswire : Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden clarifies message to Black America

    By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior Correspondent
    @StacyBrown

    Joe Biden campaign rally


    Presumptive Democratic Presidential Nominee Joe Biden clarified his message to Black America after the GOP, and others, seized on a remark he made in jest while wrapping up an interview with the famous Breakfast Club.
    “I shouldn’t have been such a wise guy,” Biden stated after the comments to show host, Charlamagne Tha God, went viral.
    “I shouldn’t have been so cavalier. No one should have to vote for any party based on their race, religion, and background.”
    As the Breakfast Club interview wrapped and a Biden aide said he was running short on time, Charlamagne asked the former vice president to stop by the studio when Biden returns to New York. It’s a long way until November,” Charlamagne told Biden. “We’ve got more questions.”
    Biden replied, “You’ve got more questions?” “Well, I tell you what, if you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for Trump or me, then you ain’t black.”
    Republicans seized on the remark, with some sending emails to NNPA Newswire claiming that Biden was “race-baiting.”
    In response, NNPA Newswire asked members of the GOP to address what many in the African American community believe have been the racially-charged remarks and actions of the president. There was no response.
    “The comments made at the end of the Breakfast Club interview were in jest, but let’s be clear about what the VP was saying: he was making the distinction that he would put his record with the African American community up against Trump’s any day. Period,” Biden’s senior advisor Symone D. Sanders wrote on Twitter.
    “Vice President Biden spent his career fighting alongside and for the African American community. He won his party’s nomination by earning every vote and meeting people where they are, and that’s exactly what he intends to do this November,” Sanders stated.
    In a “Meet the Black Press” segment of an interview on the web-based show, “Make It Plain,” National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) President and CEO, Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis, said people should react favorably to the exchange.
    “Charlamagne always asks pointed questions, he takes no prisoners and he’s a great brother,” Chavis stated. “But, the vice president is a street fighter who comes from Wilmington, Delaware. Remember, he was speaking directly to Charlamagne.”
    Pressed further, Dr. Chavis noted that the issue boils down to the current administration verses a possible Biden administration.
    “What Black people have to decide is not all of the prerequisites, but given what we know today, what is our aspirations? Who can best improve our quality of life? That’s the issue,” Chavis stated.
    “We can’t get caught up in personality politics. I would rather have a president who speaks from the heart, from the gut, than a president who speaks from a teleprompter. I want to know what Biden is thinking about. That he’s thinking about Black, White, Latino, about the oneness of man.
    “I would prefer to hear what he has to say, rather than to muzzle him. I tell hip-hop artists that they have freedom of expression, but they have to be responsible for what they put out. You have the freedom to say what you want, but after you say it, you have to be accountable.”
    In an interview with NNPA Newswire in February, Biden said the Black vote was critical to anyone with aspirations of winning in November.
    Biden’s Plan for Black America.
    Last month, he called on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to collect more data regarding how COVID-19 is affecting communities, including breaking down its impact by race.
    “The data we’ve seen so far suggests that African Americans are dying from COVID-19 at a higher rate than whites. Long-standing systemic inequalities are contributing to this disparity – including the fact that African Americans are more likely to be uninsured and to live in communities where they are exposed to high levels of air pollution,” Biden stated.
    Barack Obama’s former vice president’s plan for Black America includes:
    • Advance the economic mobility of African Americans and close the racial wealth and income gaps.
    • Expand access to high-quality education and tackle racial inequity in our education system.
    • Make far-reaching investments in ending health disparities by race.
    • Strengthen America’s commitment to justice.
    • Make the right to vote and the right to equal protection real for African Americans.
    Address environmental justice.
    Biden, who this month fiercely denounced the shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery, noted that he spearheaded the Community Oriented Policing Services program, which authorized funding both for the hiring of additional police officers and for training on how to undertake a community policing approach.
    However, the program has never been funded to fulfill the original vision for community policing. He said he would reinvigorate the COPS program with a $300 million investment.
    As a condition of the grant, Biden stated that hiring police officers must mirror the racial diversity of the community they serve. Additionally, as President, Biden promises to establish a panel to scrutinize what equipment is used by law enforcement in our communities.
    He said he would invest in public defenders’ offices to ensure defendants’ access to quality counsel, and create a $20 billion grant program to support criminal justice reform at the state and local level.
    Biden pledged to work with Congress to reform federal sentencing and provide incentives to state and local systems to do the same. He said he would end once and for all, the federal crack and powder cocaine disparity, decriminalize the use of cannabis and automatically expunge all prior cannabis use convictions.
    The Democrat also promises to end the criminalization of poverty and cash bail, which he called the modern-day debtors’ prison.
    “We need a comprehensive agenda for African Americans with an ambition that matches the scale of the challenge and with a recognition that race-neutral policies are not a sufficient response to race-based disparities,” Biden noted.

  • Newswire : #MalcolmXDay: 20 quotes relevant to the movement today

    Malcolm X’s birthday is May 19.
    He would have been 95 years old his year.
    Written By D.L. Chandler, Newsone

    Malcolm X


    Malcolm X remains one of the most important figures of the American Civil Rights Movement, and his transformation into a vocal human rights activist added to his already impressive legacy.
    The man later known as el-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz came to relax some of his fiery politics that defined the earlier part of his time in the spotlight, and yet that same passion remained even as he began to embrace a comprehensive approach to racial harmony.
    With the current situations across the nation regarding disparity in how police treat people of color and similar injustices, Malcolm X’s words still hold resonance in modern times. From Ferguson to Baltimore, African-Americans are reminded that incidents in those respective cities are part of a systematic condition that renders Black people targets of various forms of mistreatment.
    On what would be his 95th birthday, NewsOne takes a look at 20 Malcolm X quotes that maintain relevance to this day.
    Happy Day Of Birth, Malcolm X. May you rest peacefully forever.
    “Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you’re a man, you take it.”
    “The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses.”
    “Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.”
    “A man who stands for nothing will fall for anything.”
    “We are nonviolent with people who are nonviolent with us.”
    “Concerning nonviolence, it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.”
    “If you’re not ready to die for it, put the word ‘freedom’ out of your vocabulary.”
    “I am not a racist. I am against every form of racism and segregation, every form of discrimination. I believe in human beings, and that all human beings should be respected as such, regardless of their color.”
    “You don’t have to be a man to fight for freedom. All you have to do is to be an intelligent human being.”
    “Without education, you’re not going anywhere in this world.”
    “I for one believe that if you give people a thorough understanding of what confronts them and the basic causes that produce it, they’ll create their own program, and when the people create a program, you get action.”
    “A race of people is like an individual man; until it uses its own talent, takes pride in its own history, expresses its own culture, affirms its own selfhood, it can never fulfill itself.”
    “Stumbling is not falling.”
    “I believe in the brotherhood of man, all men, but I don’t believe in brotherhood with anybody who doesn’t want brotherhood with me. I believe in treating people right, but I’m not going to waste my time trying to treat somebody right who doesn’t know how to return the treatment.”
    “You don’t have a peaceful revolution. You don’t have a turn-the-cheek revolution. There’s no such thing as a nonviolent revolution.”
    “America preaches integration and practices segregation.”
    “I believe that there will ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those that do the oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the systems of exploitation.”
    “When a person places the proper value on freedom, there is nothing under the sun that he will not do to acquire that freedom. Whenever you hear a man saying he wants freedom, but in the next breath he is going to tell you what he won’t do to get it, or what he doesn’t believe in doing in order to get it, he doesn’t believe in freedom.”
    “If, if a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that’s brotherhood. But if you – if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that’s not brotherhood, that’s hypocrisy.”
    “Power never takes a back step only in the face of more power.”

  • Newswire: Implicit bias a driver of COVID-19 among African-Americans

    By Khalil Abdullah
    Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from Ethnic Media Services

    School of Community Health Sciences faculty and staff portraits on February 4, 2010. 1. Mark Buttner 2. Melva Thompson-Robinson / UNLV Photo Services / R. Marsh Starks Client: Sherry Marks /

    Dr. Melva Thompson-Robinson
    (TriceEdneyWire.com) – Dr. Melva Thompson-Robinson knows the data on the disparate impact of the corona virus and COVID-19 on African Americans and other minorities. Her key concern is how racism and unconscious bias continue to act as an accelerant of the pandemic.
    “Stories are starting to come out where African Americans are presenting themselves to emergency rooms and having COVID symptoms and are not being seen,” Thompson-Robinson asserts. “In some cases, it’s taking multiple trips, but by the time they do get tested they are so sick they can’t recover.”
    Thompson-Robinson could have had Ms. Deborah Gatewood in mind. Gatewood repeatedly sought to be tested in mid-March for COVID-19 symptoms at the hospital in Michigan where she had been employed as a healthcare worker for over 30 years, according to Fox News 2 in Detroit. She was turned away—four times—and advised to go home and take a mild palliative, like cough syrup. Gatewood finally became so ill she had to be transported by ambulance. She died in late March at age 63 in a different hospital. She tested positive there for COVID-19, but too late for a lifesaving intervention.
    The Gatewood story is a horrific but not atypical reminder of the fatal outcomes that Dr. Thompson-Robinson attributes to a long history of sub-optimal health care experienced by African Americans and the inherent bias that bleeds into all aspects of American life, from education to housing to employment opportunities. “This is something that has been centuries in the making – in the inequality, in the racism that African Americans in particular have experienced, but also other black and brown populations as well,” Thompson-Robinson contends.
    Thompson-Robinson is the Director of the Center for Health Disparities Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She spoke on a May 1 video conference for ethnic media journalists hosted by Ethnic Media Services. By way of example, in Louisiana, African Americans comprise about 30 percent of the population and over 70 percent of the COVID-19 patients, Thompson-Robinson noted, while in Georgia, they constitute 32 percent of the population but 52 percent of the cases. She said in many communities, low wage occupations – now categorized as essential – are filled by minority workers who often have no health insurance even as data on their underlying health conditions goes uncollected.
    “We don’t get cancer at a higher rate, but we die at a higher rate. We don’t go to the physician. We aren’t getting things checked out until it’s too late.” Even when presenting to a physician or medical staff in a timely manner, as Ms. Gatewood attempted to do in Michigan, unconscious bias or stereotypes can weigh in on what may ultimately be an ill-formed medical diagnosis or supposition.
    Thompson-Robinson spoke of her own experience of having to forcefully advocate for a family member. She recommends that a prospective patient bring someone along to the emergency room to serve as an advocate when he or she isn’t feeling well. Individuals from minority groups aren’t taken seriously when they say they’re in pain or when they are unable to articulate their symptoms to the satisfaction of medical personnel.
    As for bias, it can manifest in simple ways. “’Oh, I’m not racist,” Thompson-Robinson says mimicking a casual interaction, “but yet their actions treat people a little bit differently based on the biases they have. In the field of medicine, delays in being seen or treated typically yield poorer health outcomes.”
    David Hayes-Bautista, Director of the Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture at UCLA, concurred that minorities staff the front lines of essential service professions. “Feeding the nation and subject to deportation,” is how he described many of the undocumented or legally tenuous workers putting their lives at risk as farmworkers, meat packers, truck drivers, shelf stockers, check-out clerks, auto mechanics, bus drivers, nursing home attendants and other occupations heavily staffed by Latinos and people of color. They are also twice as likely not to have health insurance, Hayes-Bautista said.
    In the public discourse about the effects of COVID-19, Mayra Alvarez, president of the Children’s Partnership, expressed dismay at the scant attention paid to children. Federal relief efforts have excluded immigrants and, by default, their children.
    At least 55 million students have been cast adrift by school closings in 43 states and the District of Columbia. Food insecurity is a paramount concern, as is the dearth of access to distance learning. Nor is there much discussion about the long-term consequences of the trauma to which children are being exposed. Children are residing in food-insecure homes where their parents sacrifice their own meals to feed them, Alvarez said, citing a survey of 500 families in California by Children’s Partnership and Ed Trust. Some 72 percent of respondents said they “are worried about their family’s mental health.”
    Offering one reason for hope, Alvarez said, “I truly believe that COVID-19 is shifting the conversation when it comes to greater understanding of historical inequities in health, in economic opportunity, in overall well-being – historical inequities that many of us have known have existed forever.” It is a sentiment shared by Thompson-Robinson. “I hope that once we come out of this pandemic, these conversations will continue – and that people will realize the health of our communities, our workforce, our country is only as strong as its weakest link.”

  • Newswire: Obama jabs U.S. response to coronavirus in commencement address

    By Evan Semones, Politico

    Former President Barack Obama


    Former President Barack Obama on Saturday criticized the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic during a commencement address to college graduates, saying some leaders “aren’t even pretending to be in charge.”
    “This pandemic has fully, finally torn back the curtain on the idea that so many of the folks in charge know what they’re doing,” Obama said during a two-hour virtual commencement for graduates of historically black colleges and universities that streamed on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.
    The former president, who did not mention President Donald Trump by name, has generally shied away from weighing in on politics or criticizing his successor since leaving office, but has more recently spoken out against the current administration’s handling of the coronavirus crisis.
    Last week during a call with some 3,000 former staffers and administration officials, Obama called the administration’s response to the pandemic “an absolute chaotic disaster.”
    Trump has since pushed an unfounded “Obamagate” conspiracy theory on Twitter alleging Obama administration officials entrapped former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn in a bid to undermine Trump’s presidency.
    Obama also addressed the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, a young black man killed while jogging in Georgia, while acknowledging the hardships that graduates and members of the African American community also now face during the pandemic.
    “Let’s be honest, a disease like this just spotlights the underlying inequalities and burdens that black communities have historically had to deal with in this country,” Obama said. “We see it in the disproportionate impact of Covid-19 on our communities, just as we see it when a black man goes for a jog and some folks feel like they can stop and question and shoot him if he doesn’t submit to their questioning.”
    Obama told the HBCU graduates to find allies to help create change they feel is needed to fix the health and societal problems in the country.
    “If the world’s going to get better, it’s going to be up to you,” he said. “And if you’re inactive, that will also speak volumes.”
    Obama followed up his remarks with a nationally televised second commencement address on Saturday evening. The 44th president stayed clear of the politics of the pandemic response in a largely upbeat speech, but called out “so-called grown-ups” for “doing what feels good, what’s convenient, what’s easy.”
    “All those adults that you used to think were in charge and knew what they were doing? Turns out they don’t have all the answers,” Obama told graduates during the one-hour special sponsored by the Lebron James Family Foundation. “A lot of them aren’t even asking the right questions.”
    Former President Bill Clinton, who spoke during a separate one-hour CNN special on Saturday evening that also honored the class of 2020, encouraged graduates to build unity in “a world of growing inequalities and divisive tribalism.”
    “With a tough but open mind and a caring heart you can help keep us together,” Clinton said. “Help find ways to serve others, not run away from them. Help to unite, not to divide. Help to build, not tear down. Help to support, not demean.”
    A reporter asked Trump about Obama’s comments. “Look, he was an incompetent president. That’s all I can say. Grossly incompetent.”
    Trump has a history of blaming Obama for his administration’s problems.