The Greene County Democrat

Category: Newswire

  • Newswire :Citizenship question could hurt Census count of Black America

    By Khalil Abdullah

    Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from Ethnic Media Services

    (TriceEdneyWire.com) – The Constitution requires that America’s decennial census count all persons residing in the United States, not just citizens, a clearly stated objective now at risk.
    In a lawsuit brought by plaintiffs including states, cities and civil rights organizations, New York Southern District Judge Jesse Furman ruled on Jan. 15 in their favor against Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’ intention directing the Census Bureau to include a question asking census respondents whether they and everyone else in their households are U.S. citizens.
    At issue is not only whether the question’s inclusion is legal, given administrative timelines that were missed, but whether it would depress participation, particularly among ethnic populations, thus resulting in an inaccurate count.
    Jeri Green, Senior Advisor on the 2020 Census at the National Urban League, termed Ross’ action “a thinly veiled attempt to sabotage and affect congressional and Electoral College representation by deliberately undercounting vulnerable populations and erasing them from the census count.”
    Green noted that “out of roughly 11 to 12 million undocumented immigrants in America, about 620,00 are black, according to the most recent statistics by the Migration Policy Institute. But equally at risk, however, are the 4.2 million documented black immigrants who comprise a rising share of the black population in the United States.”
    Green participated as a panelist in a media conference call co-sponsored by the Leadership Conference Education Fund and Ethnic Media Services.
    Census data is used to determine congressional reapportionment as well as the basis to accurately and fairly distribute federal money to states, counties and cities for a variety of programmatic and infrastructure needs. From schools and hospitals to social services, there is virtually no civic arena that is left unaffected by census apportioned revenue – between $700 to $800 billion annually. Data collected in 2020 will inform all such determinations for 10 years, until the next census in 2030.
    However, today’s political environment is often inflamed by debates over immigration and related issues, such as a proposed expansion of a wall on America’s southern border or a recently published story in The Washington Post on non-citizen voting in North Carolina — votes sometimes cast due to ignorance of, or misunderstandings about citizenship status.
    Like the National Urban League’s concerns about the dilution and disempowerment of the black vote, and underfunding of programs and services, the National Association of Latino Elected Officials (NALEO) shares the same perspective relative to its Latino constituents.
    Angela Manso, Director of Policy and Legislative Affairs, NALEO Educational Fund, cited Census Bureau findings in Providence County, R.I., that “over 78 percent of the Latinos surveyed believe that a citizenship question would make people afraid to participate in the census.”
    Manso contends Secretary Ross’ insistence to include the question is “designed to erase our presence in this country and impact our growing political force.”
    A newly released Pew Research Center analysis of the 2020 electorate underscores demographic shifts that will produce a greater number of eligible ethnic minority voters, especially Latinos.
    John C. Yang, President and Executive Director, Asian Americans Advancing Justice, a panelist on the call, argued for the elimination of the question as well. He explained that its addition would likely produce a lower turnout among Asian Americans, this country’s fastest growing ethnic cohort. A significant percentage of that growth is due to recent immigrants. “One in four Asians in the United States,” Yang said, “are new Americans and have never participated in the Census, and a citizenship question endangers an accurate count.”
    Panelists urged Congress to “step in” to resolve the contention over the citizenship question by introducing legislation that would bar its usage. There are concerns that even with Judge Furman’s ruling in New York, a potentially favorable outcome for opponents of the question’s inclusion in a Maryland lawsuit and yet a third trial in California that is anticipated to produce a ruling similar to New York’s, the Supreme Court could decide to hear the case on the government’s expedited appeal.
    Though presumably adherence to precedents would prevail at the country’s highest court, a new law specifically excluding the citizen question could put the issue to rest and beyond the reach of Secretary Ross or others who may seek to exploit its use to accomplish a political agenda.
    A House bill, the Census IDEA Act, sponsored by Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., that would bar the question’s use, only a few days ago saw a companion bill introduced by Sen. Brian Schatz, D-HI.
    Yet, while the panelists argued that a fair and accurate census should be a bi-partisan issue — as an inaccurate count reduces revenue for Americans in need everywhere, not to mention violates the principle of equality under law — attempting to enact legislation brings its own risks.
    For one, not only would both the Senate and the House have to pass legislation, the President would have to sign it into law. Should he choose to veto it, it would take 67 senators to override.
    Terri Ann Lowenthal, a former staff director of the House subcommittee charged with overseeing the census, said the most likely route to pass legislation addressing the citizenship question would be to attach it to a “must-pass bill,” like an appropriations bill.
    Meanwhile, with court cases still pending and the final status of the question still unresolved, key deadlines are at risk. A critical public education awaits implementation and there may be a delay in printing the final census forms until after this summer’s target date. Green noted that Census Bureau enumerators, drawn from the communities they survey to conduct the door-to-door interviews when individuals fail to respond to mailed surveys, have yet to be hired and trained. But to hire the 500,00 people needed for the task, the Census Bureau expects to screen 2.5 million applicants.
    Green also pointed out that, given the 2020 census will be the first to utilize the Internet as medium of response, the consequences of the digital divide and lack of Internet access may negatively affect response rates from already hard to count communities, typically low-income and rural, and ones where the number of children present in a household are often unreported.
    Beth Lynk, Census Counts Campaign Director for The Leadership Conference Education Fund, speaking of the New York ruling, said that “each of the dozens of defects the judge found” would provide a sufficient basis to exclude the question. Especially relevant to traditionally hard to count populations, Lynk cited a quote from Judge Furman’s 277-page decision: “Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people would go uncounted if the citizenship question is included.”

  • Newswire : Alabama Press Association censures Goodloe Sutton and Democrat-Reporter for editorial urging revival of the Klan to “clean-up” socialism in Washington D. C.

       The Alabama Press Association (APA) Board of Directors voted Tuesday to censure Goodloe Sutton and suspend the association membership of The Democrat-Reporter. Sutton wrote an editorial last week calling for the Klan to ride again to rid the nation’s capital of socialism. The APA members have a right under the bylaws to address the question of expulsion of the newspaper at their next membership meeting.
 Goodloe Sutton, the editor and publisher of the Democrat-Reporter in Linden, Ala., wrote the editorial titled “Klan needs to ride again” that ran in the paper last week.
        “Time for the Ku Klux Klan to night ride again,” read the Feb. 14 editorial. “Democrats in the Republican Party and Democrats are plotting to raise taxes in Alabama. They do not understand how to eliminate expenses when money is needed in other areas. This socialist-communist idealogy [sic] sounds good to the ignorant, and uneducated, and the simple minded-people.”
        “Seems like the Klan would be welcome to raid the gated communities up there,” concluded Sutton. “They call them compounds now. Truly, they are the ruling class.”
        Linden, the county seat of Marengo County, is a town of about 2,100 in the western part of the state, near the Mississippi border. The newspaper, a weekly that has won awards for investigative journalism, had a reported circulation of 3,000 in 2015.
        Melissa Brown, a reporter for the Montgomery Advertiser, spoke to Sutton Monday to confirm he had written the editorial and to clarify his comments.
        “If we could get the Klan to go up there and clean out D.C., we’d all been better off,” Sutton told the Advertiser. When asked what he meant by “clean out,” Sutton suggested lynching, saying, “We’ll get the hemp ropes out, loop them over a tall limb and hang all of them.”
        When the Advertiser asked whether it was appropriate to call for the lynchings of Americans, Sutton was not swayed. “It’s not calling for the lynchings of Americans,” said Sutton, whose family has owned the newspaper since 1917. “These are socialist-communists we’re talking about. Do you know what socialism and communism is?”
        When asked if he recognized the Ku Klux Klan as a violent and racist organization, the Advertiser reported that Sutton compared it to the NAACP. “A violent organization? Well, they didn’t kill but a few people,” Sutton said. “The Klan wasn’t violent until they needed to be.”
        `Democratic Sen. Doug Jones and Rep. Teri Sewell, whose district includes Linden, called for Sutton to step down on Monday evening.
        “OMG! What rock did this guy crawl out from under?” wrote Jones on Twitter. “This editorial is absolutely disgusting & he should resign — NOW! I have seen what happens when we stand by while people — especially those with influence — publish racist, hateful views. Words matter. Actions matter. Resign now!”
        “For the millions of people of color who have been terrorized by white supremacy, this kind of ‘editorializing’ about lynching is not a joke — it is a threat,” wrote Sewell, who is African-American. “These comments are deeply offensive and inappropriate, especially in 2019. Mr. Sutton should apologize and resign.”
        Republican Richard Shelby, Alabama’s senior U.S. senator, urged Sutton to apologize and resign in a Tuesday-morning statement to Yahoo News.
        “The rhetoric displayed by the Democrat-Reporter is disturbing, disgusting and entirely unacceptable,” said Shelby through a spokesperson. “I urge the newspaper to issue an apology and the publisher to resign from his duties. We cannot tolerate this sort of repulsive speech, particularly from our fourth estate.”
        The Democrat-Reporter did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the calls for a resignation. “This is not the first racist editorial coming from Goodloe Sutton and the Democrat Reporter. He railed against the Obama Administration on a weekly basis and he has written articles and editorials that were uncomplimentary toward local Black elected officials or many years,” said John Zippert, Editor and Co-Publisher of the Greene County Democrat 
        In December, the Senate passed its first-ever anti-lynching bill, making the act a federal crime. Estimates suggest that more than 4,000 Americans, most of them African-American, were lynched in the United States between 1882 and 1968.

  • Newswire: Angela Davis speaks In Birmingham on day she was supposed to receive award from Birmingham Civil Rights Institute

    Article and Photo by: Marika N. Johnson

    Angela Davis speaks with Imani Perry at Birmingham program

    A civil rights icon, Dr. Angela Davis spoke to a sold-out free event in Birmingham on Saturday, February 16, 2019,brought by a grassroots organization, The Birmingham Committee for Truth and Reconciliation. This event communicated her wisdom and words to a community of thousands of varied ethnicities and religious backgrounds.Her former Sunday school teacher anddriving force of the creation of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, Odessa Woolfolk, was in attendance, along with Mayor Randall Woodfin and a plethora of other dignitaries. Dr. Davis encouraged activism and brought a message of hope and the trajectory of change.

    She also shared her dismay and suprise about the rescinding of the Fred Shuttlesworth award from the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. The Institute had originally announced that they were to honor the Birmingham, Alabama, native Angela Davis with its annual Fred L. Shuttlesworth Human Rights Award but then decided that her current beliefs were not congruent with theirs. Reports all indicate the decision was largely, though not exclusively, due to pressure from Jewish individuals and organizations over Davis’s outspokenness on Palestinian human rights and vocal support for boycott, divestment, and sanctions. (BDS) against Israel. Davis told Democracy Now!on January 11, adding that the BCRI’s decision appears to be an effort to sabotage black solidarity with Palestine. “This was not primarily an assault against me as an individual; it was an assault against a whole generation of activists who have come to recognize how important internationalism is,” Davis said.

    Dr. Davis ended her hour long talk in a discussion-like forum with Dr. Imani Perry, also from Birmingham and now professor of African-American studies at Princeton University, with encouragement to the youth of today and how it was the young people’s movement in Ferguson that RE-ignited the national and even INTERnational discussion on unfair policing policies. “…sometimes we HAVE to do some things differently!”

  • Newswire: Trump’s National Emergency Declaration called unconstitutional, ‘egregious abuse of power’

    By Hazel Trice Edney


    (TriceEdneyWire.com) – U. S. House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), the highest ranking African-American in the U. S. Congress, has assailed President Donald Trump’s immigration national emergency as an “egregious abuse of power” and calls on his fellow congressional members to challenge his actions.
    “The President’s declaration of a manufactured national emergency in order to erect an ineffective, wasteful, and medieval wall sets a dangerous precedent,” Clyburn said in a statement. “All of us who have taken an oath to the Constitution must challenge this egregious abuse of power and uphold the checks and balances that are the foundation of our republic.”
    Clyburn joins a chorus of voices expressing outrage about Trump’s action which could draw $5.7 billion of tax payer dollars for a wall that more than 58 percent of Americans say they do not want, according to a recent PRRI survey.
    “This declaration has more to do with the President’s bruised ego than actually doing what is best for America. The author of ‘The Art of The Deal’ couldn’t make a deal to build a wall. This is a fake solution to a fake crisis and we must stand firm in keeping the nation focused on the real issues impacting Americans,” says Congressional Black Caucus Chair Karen Bass (D-Calif.).
    The Washington Post has reported that a coalition of 16 states have filed a federal lawsuit to block Trump’s plan for a border wall. Like Clyburn, the complaint filed in the U. S. District Court for the Northern District of California, argues that Trump’s declaration of a national emergency was unconstitutional.
    The lawsuit is being brought by states with Democratic governors, except Maryland’s Larry Hogan, a Republican who has challenged Trump on several major issues.
    Trump is clear that he is declaring the national emergency because Congress refused to provide enough money for a border wall that he promised as a presidential candidate and also promised that Mexico would pay for it. But, then Mexico President Enrique Pena Nieto refused to pay for the wall, saying “Mexico doesn’t believe in walls.” Trump was then stuck with the unkept campaign promise and now appears desperate for a way to make good.
    The 16 states suing Trump are California, New York, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon and Virginia.
    In a Rose Garden announcement of his intent to declare the emergency, Trump claimed he is protection the nation from caravans of people that he says are bringing drugs and crime into the U. S. through the Southern border, a claim that experts have refuted as false.
    “So, we’re going to be signing today, and registering, national emergency. And it’s a great thing to do because we have an invasion of drugs, invasion of gangs, invasion of people, and it’s unacceptable,” Trump said in his Rose Garden announcement, calling the emergency a “National Security and Humanitarian Crisis”.
    As Trump continues to dig in his heals, predicting an eventual win in the U. S. Supreme Court, civil rights leaders are fighting their war in the court of public opinion.
    CBC Chairwoman Bass concludes, “There are families who can’t make ends meet because their wages are too low. Citizens are being denied equal access at the ballot box because of voter suppression. We have a criminal justice system that still treats Americans better if they are rich and guilty than if they are poor and innocent. Black boys and girls are dying prematurely from gun violence while Black women are losing their lives during childbirth. These are just some of the real crises confronting America. Mr. President, it’s time to finally demonstrate the leadership worthy of the office you hold.”

  • Newswire : America watching as top three Virginia officials are embroiled in controversy

    Page from Gov. Northam’s medical school yearbook

    Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Richmond Free Press
    (TriceEdneyWire.com) – In the suddenly topsy-turvy world of Virginia politics, one fact is certain: Ralph S. Northam is still Virginia’s governor. He also has no immediate plans to resign, despite the uproar and the torrent of calls for him to quit the office some believe he is no longer fit to hold.
    The sudden reversal of fortune began when Big League Politics, a conservative, Republican-leaning news and opinion blog, posted a 35-year-old yearbook photo that appears under the governor’s name showing two people, one in blackface and the other in a Ku Klux Klan robe and hood.
    The blog indicated that it was tipped off to the forgotten photo published in the 1984 edition of the Eastern Virginia Medical School yearbook by a former classmate upset with Gov. Northam’s stance on abortion.
    Struck by an avalanche of criticism, the governor initially issued an apology on Friday, Feb. 1.
    “I am deeply sorry for the decision I made to appear as I did in this photo and for the hurt that decision caused then and now. This behavior is not in keeping with who I am today and the values I have fought for throughout my career in the military, in medicine and in public service. But I want to be clear, I understand how this decision shakes Virginians’ faith in that commitment,” he stated.
    He pledged to do everything he could to restore the public’s trust in him.
    But at a Saturday, Feb. 2, news conference, Gov. Northam recanted the apology.
    Instead, the 59-year-old genial pediatric neurosurgeon with a reedy voice urged people to trust his word that he was not one of the two people in the photo, a position that began gaining support this week as published reports began surfacing in which former classmates agreed that other students were in the photo.
    Gov. Northam, who also was criticized for dressing up as a plantation owner at Halloween, said at the news conference that he had never seen the photo because he finished medical school and started a residency program with the Army Medical Corps in San Antonio, Texas, and did not purchase a copy.
    The governor also said that while he blackened his cheeks with shoe polish later that year in dressing up like his favorite entertainer, Michael Jackson, to compete in and win a dance contest in San Antonio, he said he was certain the yearbook photo was not his and that he was not one of the two people pictured.
    As the governor fought to clear his name, he gained unexpected relief from the controversy when Lt. Gov. Justin E. Fairfax and Attorney General Mark R. Herring both came under their own clouds.
    Late Sunday, Feb. 3, Lt. Gov. Fairfax, 39, suddenly became embroiled in an equally explosive controversy regarding a sexual encounter at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston with Dr. Vanessa Tyson, now a California university professor. Dr. Tyson now publicly claims Lt. Gov. Fairfax, forced her to perform oral sex after they went to his hotel room.
    Fairfax, a single Columbia University law student at the time, was working on a political campaign.
    By Tuesday, the lieutenant governor had displaced Gov. Northam in the headlines as he sought to defend himself. Lt. Gov. Fairfax insisted the encounter with Dr. Tyson was consensual after Big League Politics also spread the information based on an email the blog said was provided by a Richmond friend of Dr. Tyson, Adria Scharf, executive director of the Richmond Peace Education Center and wife of Dr. Thad Williamson, a University of Richmond professor who has been a top adviser to a potential gubernatorial rival of Lt. Gov. Fairfax, Mayor Levar M. Stoney. A second woman, Meredith Watson, has since accused Fairfax of sexual assault, intensifying the controversy surrounding him.
    Then on Wednesday, Attorney General Herring, 57, who had urged the governor to resign in favor of Lt. Gov. Fairfax, issued an unexpected admission about his own blackface episode.
    Herring said in 1980 when he was a 19-year-old college student, he and friends “dressed up and put on wigs and brown makeup” and went to a party portraying “rappers they listened to at the time, like Kurtis Blow.”
    Herring, who immediately resigned as co-chair of the Democratic Attorney Generals Association, called his actions a product of “our ignorance and glib attitudes” and a lack of “appreciation for the experiences and perspectives of others.”
    He said in the years since, the memory has caused him “deep regret and shame,” though he added that the past conduct “is in no way reflective of the man I have become in the nearly 40 years since.”
    The upheaval has come amid a fast-moving General Assembly session when Gov. Northam is a key player in shaping legislation and Lt. Gov. Fairfax presides over the state Senate.
    Amid the new revelations, Gov. Northam was bolstered by Republican House Speaker Kirk Cox’s public statement Monday that the yearbook photo could not be considered an impeachable offense and the fact that the governor’s aides and members of his cabinet have stuck with him rather than resigning. He is soldiering on.
    On Tuesday, Feb. 5, for example, Gov. Northam quietly signed legislation providing a $750 million package of incentives for Amazon, which plans to open part of its East Coast headquarters in Northern Virginia.
    For those who denounced the governor in the wake of the photo — particularly a wide swatch of elected Democrats near and far — it was simpler when they could take an unforgiving stance solely involving Gov. Northam.
    Take the 21-member Virginia Legislative Black Caucus, which has urged the governor to resign and end the turmoil.
    “We amplify our call for the governor to resign,” the Caucus stated Saturday after listening to Gov. Northam’s press conference. “He has irrevocably lost the faith and trust of the people. Changing his story now casts further doubt on his ability to gain that trust.”
    But the Caucus is among many looking for a fallback position with the new revelations involving the two other top Democratic leaders, notably Lt. Gov. Fairfax, who is first in line to succeed to the office if Gov. Northam resigns.
    The Caucus, led by Henrico Delegate Lamont Bagby, did not comment Wednesday on how their members will deal with a governor they have labeled a pariah, but whom they might have to work with. Most of the Richmond legislative delegation also didn’t comment. The only response has come from Delegate Betsy B. Carr, D-69th, who responded on her plan of action with Gov. Northam remaining in office: “As I have always done, I will support and advocate for legislation that helps my constituents and the Commonwealth. I work each and every day to improve the lives of Virginians, and I will continue to do that.”

  • Newswire : Waters and Cleaver express concerns about nomination of David Malpass to lead World Bank

    Congressman Cleaver and Congresswoman Waters

    WASHINGTON — Today, Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA), Chairwoman of the House Financial Services Committee, and Congressman Emanuel Cle Cleaver and er (D-MO), Chair of the Subcommittee on National Security, International Development, and Monetary Policy, issued the following statements on the nomination of David Malpass, Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs, to serve as President of the World Bank.
    “It’s difficult to believe that any serious effort to find a qualified candidate with a compelling vision for the mission of the World Bank and a belief in the legitimacy of international development finance would lead to the nomination of Treasury Undersecretary for International Affairs David Malpass,” said Chairwoman Waters.
    “His agenda for international development policy seems to begin with a reliance on unfettered private capital flows and end with a diminished role for the public sector, as the engines of global growth. He is an anti-internationalist, anti-worker market fundamentalist who understands neither the markets nor the importance of an effective public sector in helping reign in market excesses, promoting stability, and ensuring that the benefits of growth are broadly shared in society.
    Moreover, if the World Bank’s board of directors ultimately votes to confirm Mr. Malpass, the Bank’s climate finance agenda, which is an increasingly essential element of global economic cooperation, will also be under threat. If the Trump Administration is allowed to embed its ideological bias into the world’s most important multilateral development institution, the institutional framework for the post-World War II global economic order will be imperiled.”
    “The nomination of David Malpass as the next World Bank President should have every American deeply concerned,” said Chairman Cleaver. “His strong criticism of global organizations and disdain for multilateral institutions are antithetical to the mission of the organization of which he has been asked to lead. For nearly eighty years the World Bank—guided by American leadership—has led a development of the global economy unmatched in human history. The Bank has played a pivotal role in the reduction of global poverty, protection of workers, and fight to close the enormous income inequality gap. If Mr. Malpass cannot commit to advancing this agenda and supporting the core mission of the World Bank, then the board should reject his nomination.”
    The House Financial Services Committee is responsible for conducting oversight of U.S. participation in the multilateral development banks, including the World Bank.
    Financial Services Committee Democrats have consistently pushed for strong leadership at the World Bank and insisted on more transparency and disclosure of information. As a result, Committee Democrats have continuously played an active role in helping to shape the development policies that have helped make the World Bank the preeminent development institution that it has become.
    In previous Congresses, Committee Members conditioned U.S. support for the Bank on the creation of the Inspection Panel — an independent accountability mechanism that could investigate allegations by citizens of the Bank’s failure to follow its own policies and procedures.
    The Committee has also worked in a bipartisan manner to successfully push for debt relief for impoverished countries.

  • Newswire: America watching as top three Virginia officials are embroiled in controversy

     Gov. Northam’s medical school yearbook


    Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Richmond Free Press

    (TriceEdneyWire.com) – In the suddenly topsy-turvy world of Virginia politics, one fact is certain: Ralph S. Northam is still Virginia’s governor. He also has no immediate plans to resign, despite the uproar and the torrent of calls for him to quit the office some believe he is no longer fit to hold.
    The sudden reversal of fortune began when Big League Politics, a conservative, Republican-leaning news and opinion blog, posted a 35-year-old yearbook photo that appears under the governor’s name showing two people, one in blackface and the other in a Ku Klux Klan robe and hood.
    The blog indicated that it was tipped off to the forgotten photo published in the 1984 edition of the Eastern Virginia Medical School yearbook by a former classmate upset with Gov. Northam’s stance on abortion.
    Struck by an avalanche of criticism, the governor initially issued an apology on Friday, Feb. 1.
    “I am deeply sorry for the decision I made to appear as I did in this photo and for the hurt that decision caused then and now. This behavior is not in keeping with who I am today and the values I have fought for throughout my career in the military, in medicine and in public service. But I want to be clear, I understand how this decision shakes Virginians’ faith in that commitment,” he stated.
    He pledged to do everything he could to restore the public’s trust in him.
    But at a Saturday, Feb. 2, news conference, Gov. Northam recanted the apology.
    Instead, the 59-year-old genial pediatric neurosurgeon with a reedy voice urged people to trust his word that he was not one of the two people in the photo, a position that began gaining support this week as published reports began surfacing in which former classmates agreed that other students were in the photo.
    Gov. Northam, who also was criticized for dressing up as a plantation owner at Halloween, said at the news conference that he had never seen the photo because he finished medical school and started a residency program with the Army Medical Corps in San Antonio, Texas, and did not purchase a copy.
    The governor also said that while he blackened his cheeks with shoe polish later that year in dressing up like his favorite entertainer, Michael Jackson, to compete in and win a dance contest in San Antonio, he said he was certain the yearbook photo was not his and that he was not one of the two people pictured.
    As the governor fought to clear his name, he gained unexpected relief from the controversy when Lt. Gov. Justin E. Fairfax and Attorney General Mark R. Herring both came under their own clouds.
    Late Sunday, Feb. 3, Lt. Gov. Fairfax, 39, suddenly became embroiled in an equally explosive controversy regarding a sexual encounter at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston with Dr. Vanessa Tyson, now a California university professor. Dr. Tyson now publicly claims Lt. Gov. Fairfax, forced her to perform oral sex after they went to his hotel room.
    Fairfax, a single Columbia University law student at the time, was working on a political campaign.
    By Tuesday, the lieutenant governor had displaced Gov. Northam in the headlines as he sought to defend himself. Lt. Gov. Fairfax insisted the encounter with Dr. Tyson was consensual after Big League Politics also spread the information based on an email the blog said was provided by a Richmond friend of Dr. Tyson, Adria Scharf, executive director of the Richmond Peace Education Center and wife of Dr. Thad Williamson, a University of Richmond professor who has been a top adviser to a potential gubernatorial rival of Lt. Gov. Fairfax, Mayor Levar M. Stoney. A second woman, Meredith Watson, has since accused Fairfax of sexual assault, intensifying the controversy surrounding him.
    Then on Wednesday, Attorney General Herring, 57, who had urged the governor to resign in favor of Lt. Gov. Fairfax, issued an unexpected admission about his own blackface episode.
    Herring said in 1980 when he was a 19-year-old college student, he and friends “dressed up and put on wigs and brown makeup” and went to a party portraying “rappers they listened to at the time, like Kurtis Blow.”
    Herring, who immediately resigned as co-chair of the Democratic Attorney Generals Association, called his actions a product of “our ignorance and glib attitudes” and a lack of “appreciation for the experiences and perspectives of others.”
    He said in the years since, the memory has caused him “deep regret and shame,” though he added that the past conduct “is in no way reflective of the man I have become in the nearly 40 years since.”
    The upheaval has come amid a fast-moving General Assembly session when Gov. Northam is a key player in shaping legislation and Lt. Gov. Fairfax presides over the state Senate.
    Amid the new revelations, Gov. Northam was bolstered by Republican House Speaker Kirk Cox’s public statement Monday that the yearbook photo could not be considered an impeachable offense and the fact that the governor’s aides and members of his cabinet have stuck with him rather than resigning. He is soldiering on.
    On Tuesday, Feb. 5, for example, Gov. Northam quietly signed legislation providing a $750 million package of incentives for Amazon, which plans to open part of its East Coast headquarters in Northern Virginia.
    For those who denounced the governor in the wake of the photo — particularly a wide swatch of elected Democrats near and far — it was simpler when they could take an unforgiving stance solely involving Gov. Northam.
    Take the 21-member Virginia Legislative Black Caucus, which has urged the governor to resign and end the turmoil.
    “We amplify our call for the governor to resign,” the Caucus stated Saturday after listening to Gov. Northam’s press conference. “He has irrevocably lost the faith and trust of the people. Changing his story now casts further doubt on his ability to gain that trust.”
    But the Caucus is among many looking for a fallback position with the new revelations involving the two other top Democratic leaders, notably Lt. Gov. Fairfax, who is first in line to succeed to the office if Gov. Northam resigns.
    The Caucus, led by Henrico Delegate Lamont Bagby, did not comment Wednesday on how their members will deal with a governor they have labeled a pariah, but whom they might have to work with. Most of the Richmond legislative delegation also didn’t comment. The only response has come from Delegate Betsy B. Carr, D-69th, who responded on her plan of action with Gov. Northam remaining in office: “As I have always done, I will support and advocate for legislation that helps my constituents and the Commonwealth. I work each and every day to improve the lives of Virginians, and I will continue to do that.”

  • Newswire: Alabama NAACP and ACLU push City of Hoover for more information on the shooting of E. J. Bradford in the Galleria Mall

    E. J. Bradford

    An Alabama police officer who shot and killed a man misidentified as a shooting suspect in a Hoover mall last year will not be criminally charged. 

    Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall on Tuesday released a 24-page report concluding the investigation of the Thanksgiving night Riverchase Galleria shooting in which a Hoover police officer fatally shot Emantic "E.J." Bradford Jr.

Marshall's report finds that the unnamed officer "reasonably" exercised his official duties in a five-second encounter in which he shot and killed Bradford when responding to gunfire at about 9:51 p.m. on Nov. 22. 

Two officers responded to an initial shooting that injured 18-year-old Brian Wilson and a 12-year-old bystander. The attorney general's report concludes the first officer fired his gun four times. Three bullets struck Bradford in the neck and lower back. The remaining bullet, "or at least a large fragment" of it, hit a pillar near Bradford. Investigators say the fourth bullet did not strike the 12-year-old.

Hoover police initially misidentified 21-year-old Bradford as the gunman, but later said he was likely not the shooter. Erron Martez Dequan Brown, 20, was arrested in Atlanta on Nov. 29 and charged with attempted murder in Wilson's shooting.
But investigators said Bradford did have a gun, though he never fired it, according to the report. Marshall's report finds that the officer's mistake in identifying Bradford as the shooter does not mean he acted unreasonably or criminally.
The Alabama NAACP and ACLU say EJ Bradford should still be alive. But he isn't. The Attorney General released a report one week ago, calling his death "justified." However, there is still much that we the public do not know.
The public, and Bradford's family, deserve to know more information about the Hoover Police Department's policies and practices. The ACLU of Alabama and Alabama NAACP have asked the department to release their use-of-force policies, body cam policies, and racial bias training materials.
We've filed three requests and, so far, we have heard no response from the Hoover Police Department. Take action now and tell the Hoover PD to release the documents.Bradford
This information should be public record, and easily accessible to any person upon request. Refusing to disclose these policies deepens distrust of law enforcement, whereas releasing the policies will help demonstrate whether this shooting followed policy and whether the policy was appropriate and fair. The department’s silence is deafening.
In addition to the actions of the Alabama NAACP and ACLU, local community leaders in Hoover and Birmingham have called for a boycott of the Galleria Mall and other merchants in Hoover until the City Police and Administration release the full video tapes of the incident and their full policies. The community is also protesting the Alabama Attorney General’s decision not to prosecute the police that shot E. J. Bradford.

•   America watching as top three Virginia officials are embroiled in controversy

  • Revisiting the start of the Civil Rights Movement in Greene County

    Above: First Baptist Church on Greensboro St. Eutaw, where students of the Greene County Movement met and mass meetings were held.
    Below: Cemetery and park on Greensboro St. where student
    demonstrators met.

    Official Markers designating First Baptist Church and Clarence Thomas Cemetery as significant cites of the Greene County Civil Rights Movement.

    The Civil Rights Movement in Greene County often brings up names such as Rev. William M. Branch, Rev. Thomas Gilmore, Ed Carter, Peter Kirksey and Florence Kirksey, John Chambers, Rev. W.D. Lewis, Annie Brown, Sarah Duncan, Hurtlean Pippins, Fannie Lou Due and many others who came to play key roles in the local movement, but we tend to forget the youth, our African American youth, who were first to step out of a comfort zone and declare We aint gonna take it no more.
    In reviewing the accounts of some of the Greene County youth of the movement, collected earlier by the Democrat, all acclaim that the movement was launched principally by young folk walking out of then Carver High School.
    This took place early in 1965, perhaps in January, but certainly before the Jimmie Lee Jackson murder in Marion, AL on February 18, 1965 and before the Selma to Montgomery March which followed. Other SCLC organizers, Albert Turner of Marion, AL and Hosea Williams of Atlanta, made frequent trips to Greene County assisting the demonstrators.
    On the night Jimmie Lee Jackson was murdered, Greene County had planned a mass meeting at First Baptist Church, Eutaw, Albert Turner arrived to inform them that Rev. Orange had been arrested and jailed in Marion and a mass meeting was planned in Marian that evening.
    The students continued to meet in the cemetery each morning, preparing for the events of the day, which included marches and pickets in Eutaw, bearing signs denouncing all forms of segregation. The students also boycotted the local stores, owned by whites who treated Black folks terribly. Their initial grievances included mistreatment in the stores, and lack of quality books and other school materials. The Black schools had to used the discarded books of the white students.
    Students from Eatman Jr. High (Lewiston) and Greene County Training School (Boligee) joined the Carver students each day swelling their numbers and giving strength to their cause. Some parents allowed their children to gather in the cemetery but would not permit them to march, fearful for their safety. Many parents and other adults provided food for the students, since they were not at school for lunch. “After several days of us spending the day at the graveyard, some of the ladies in town realized that we didn’t have food. These ladies started coming out and bringing us bologna sandwiches and peanut butter sandwiches and orange drinks,” Luther Winn, II, stated in his account.
    Eventually First Baptist Church allowed the students to gather in their sanctuary and the community to hold mass meetings. Soon afterward, Little Zion Baptist Church (Boligee) and Ebenezer Baptist Church (Forkland) open their doors for mass meeting and organizing efforts of the movement.
    Apparently, the schools would continue to open each day, the school buses operated, teachers would arrive, often not entering the school, some students would arrive as well, but the most significant and relevant learning of the time was the commencing and conducting of the Civil Rights Movement by young Black students in Greene County.
    Winn also noted in his account of the early movement, that the young folk did not have a leader, so they “…gathered at First Baptist Church one afternoon and elected Thomas Gilmore to be the liaison from the young people and the adult leadership.”
    All the student accounts noted that the white community generally did not like the rise of this movement. This was contrary to their order of how Blacks should conduct themselves. The students recounted that as they marched from the cemetery into town, whites lined the streets armed with large sticks, boards, irons, and perhaps guns as well. Later in the movement, there were physical encounters between local whites and Black marchers.
    This account will continue next week with more of the students first hand accounts of the Greene County Civil Rights Movement, including the following: William “Nick” Underwood, Jacqueline Allen, Alice E. Smith, Geraldine Chambers Sands, Mary Dean Williams Mack, Mary Julia Winn Farmer Howard, Louvella Murray, Council Morrow and Geraldine Walton Jemison.

  • Newsire : Key figure in divestment campaign that halted U. S. investments in South Africa passes

    Minister N. Dlamini-Zuma and picture of D. Kumalo.

    Feb. 4, 2019 (GIN) – In an interview for the book “No Easy Victories: African Liberation and American Activists Over a Half Century”, Dumisani Kumalo recalled the struggle to cut off the U.S. funds that were sustaining the apartheid government of South Africa.

     “I spoke to more than 1,000 campuses all over the country in all 50 states,” Mr. Kumalo recalled.  A particular triumph came in 1986, when the U.S. Congress, overriding a veto by President Ronald Reagan, passed the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act.

    The keys to such successes, Mr. Kumalo often said, was grassroots support of the civil resistance movement and the coming together of disparate groups to agree on the wrongs of apartheid.
    After white minority rule ended in the 1990s, Kumalo spent a decade as the country’s representative to the United Nations. He died on Jan. 20 at his home in the Johannesburg suburb Midrand. He was 71.

    Kumalo began working in the U.S. in 1977 after police wrecked his home and threatened him. He was soon working for the American Committee on Africa and the Africa Fund, promoting divestment.

    He often opposed the powerful, including the United States. He objected to American eagerness to go to war in Iraq in 2003. Later in that decade, when he was sitting on the United Nations Security Council, he drew considerable criticism for opposing sanctions that were intended to counter President Robert Mugabe’s human rights abuses in Zimbabwe.

    “We didn’t want human rights to be used as a tool: ‘If I don’t like you I trot out human rights violations that you may have,’ ” he told Voice of America in 2009, explaining this and other controversial stands, “but when it is Guantánamo Bay, they keep quiet, and you know when it is Gaza, they keep quiet.”

    “We didn’t do things the way the British and the Americans wanted us to do them,” he added, “and if you don’t do it like the big ones, the French and the Americans and the British, the way they want to do them, then you are a cheeky African. Well, I am happy being a cheeky African.”

    Mr. Kumalo’s survivors include his wife, Ntombikayise Kumalo; a brother, Henry; two sons; and several grandchildren.