The Greene County Democrat

Category: Newswire

  • Newswire : Coalition of Black Organizations to hold United Nations protest against Trump insults February 15

    proudafricansempowerment
    Organizing Committee for the “Repudiating and Educating Trump” Protest Rally Feb. 15

    (TriceEdneyWire.com) – #ProudAfricans, a coalition of African, Caribbean, and African-American human rights and professional organizations, will lead a protest rally outside the United Nations Headquarters at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza Park in New York City on Feb. 15 to denounce the recent racist and bigoted anti-Africa comments by U.S. President Donald Trump, according to the Institute of the Black World 21st Century (IBW), a member of the coalition.
    The “Repudiating and Educating Trump” Protest Rally will take place at 11 a.m. on 47 Street between First and Second Avenues.
    Recent insults from Trump, reportedly referring to Haiti and African nations as S***hole countries during and Oval Office meeting, have apparently sparked an uprising in which numerous other issues are being brought to the surface. Those issues include the relationship between Africa and the U. S. and the widespread mistreatment of nations of color.
    “The rally will also highlight the past and continuing contributions by people of African descent to the creation of wealth and prosperity in the United States and other Western countries. In addition, the coalition will denounce the brutal exploitation of African migrants whose plight was highlighted in a recent CNN expose showing auctions of African migrants who have been enslaved in Libya,” states a release from IBW.
    It continues, “At the UN rally, the coalition will raise public awareness of the thousands of young Africans who continue to drown during desperate voyages across the Mediterranean to seek employment in Europe because the economies of their own countries have been ravaged by policies imposed by the World Bank and the IMF in collusion with corrupt regimes generally maintained in power by US and European governments.”
    IBW says the coalition aims to issue “a set of demands to the White House, the United Nations, and other International organizations to address the socio-economic and political marginalization of Africans and African descendants all over the world.”
    #ProudAfricans Coalition has been organized by the United African Congress (UAC), a New York-based organization representing African immigrants in the U.S. The UAC is led by Dr. Mohammed Nurhussein, chairman, and Sidique Wai, president and national spokesperson.
    “We are Africans of diverse backgrounds from across the continent and the diaspora who are proud of our heritage, who have come together to denounce strongly, without stooping to his level of depravity, the vile and racist characterization of people of African descent by the current occupant of the House that enslaved Africans built,” states Dr. Nurhussein. a retired physician, in the release, which also quotes other leaders.
    “As an Immigrant from Morocco and as a human rights activist and community organizer I also denounce the hateful words used to describe my beautiful motherland Africa,” said Ms. Souad Kirama founder and director of New Horizon Center for Advocacy and Development. “We are here in this wonderful newly founded coalition to say it loud and clear #ProudAfrican!”
    IBW President/CEO Ron Daniels, a distinguished CUNY professor, is one of the chief organizers of the protest rally at the UN. “As president of the Institute of the Black World 21st Century and convener of the Pan African Unity Dialogue, I am proud to stand with our sisters and brothers in the diaspora in repudiating the foul-mouthed insults that spewed recently from the current occupant of the White House. We will not be disrespected,” Daniels stated.
    Bourema Niambele, a leader of New York City-based African Diaspora Coalition for Justice, one of the protest organizers, says, “Donald Trump represents the kind of racism towards Africans and African immigrants that we see around the world today. As the world now knows from the recent CNN expose, Africans are even being auctioned into slavery in Libya. This is the 21st century and we will not stand for it.”
    The rally is expected to draw large numbers of people from the continental African immigrant, African-American, Caribbean-American and Latino communities from the Tri-State area and across the nation.
    The coalition’s priorities are anchored by the framework of “Protest, Policy, Power” and speakers will challenge the current socio-economic policies that negatively impact African communities at the local, national and international levels and will offer a number of solutions. In so doing, participating organizations will broaden and deepen their alliances for unified actions moving forward.
    In addition to United African Congress (UAC) and IBW, the protest rally is endorsed by Give Them A Hand Foundation, African Diaspora Coalition for Justice, Nextmedia.tv, The Black Star News, African Women Solidarity Action for Development, African Hope Committee, African Commission of Newark, New Jersey, and the African Human Rights Commission.
    For more information on the protest: 212-340-1975; info@nextmedia.tv; or Facebook: proudafricansempowerment.

  • Newswire : Super Bowl Viewers Infuriated by truck ad featuring voice of Dr. King

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    Image of church and truck in commercial that uses the voice of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

    Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the St. Louis American and Victoria Burke of NNPA

    (TriceEdneyWire.com) – A Ram Truck Super Bowl LI commercial sparked outrage by using a recording of a Martin Luther King Jr. speech to push car sales, In the 30-second ad, a recording of Dr. King’s 1968 a speech serves as the soundtrack for snapshots of everyday Americans engaged in community service.,“In the spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Ram truck owners also believe in a life of serving others,” the ad’s description said.

    The reaction was swift and harsh. An overwhelming consensus concluded that the ad was a tactless attempt to capitalize on Dr. King’s legacy. Among those offering backlash was the King Center .A tweet from the King Center read: “Neither @TheKingCenter nor @BerniceKing is the entity that approves the use of #MLK’s words or imagery for use in merchandise, entertainment (movies, music, artwork, etc) or advertisement, including tonight’s @Dodge #SuperBowl commercial.”

    Although the center carries on King’s teachings, a separate entity controls King’s speeches and image — Intellectual Properties Management Inc. Eric D. Tidwell, managing director of the organization, which is run by King’s son Dexter, said in a statement early Monday: “We found that the overall message of the ad embodied Dr. King’s philosophy that true greatness is achieved by serving others. Thus we decided to be a part of Ram’s ‘Built To Serve’ Super Bowl program.”Tidwell’s response came after an endless evening of criticism. When writer Michael Arceneaux wrote on Twitter, “So that means the King children allowed Dr. King’s voice to be used to sell me a Dodge truck,” Bernice King replied with a single word: “No.”
    April 4, 2018 will be the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee, at the hands of James Earl Ray.
    “The worst commercials are those that use icons like Martin Luther King Jr to sell things like a Dodge Ram truck,” tweeted Boston Globe Deputy Bureau Chief Matt Viser. He wasn’t the only one who noticed.
    “So, Ram Truck appropriated Martin Luther King Jr. and used an all white cast + one token black to sell trucks to Trump supporters as if we’re back in the 1950s. #SuperBowl,” stated Lucy Amato on Twitter.
    “Using a “Martin Luther King” speech and completely taking it OUT OF CONTEXT for a truck commercial is a disgrace,” another Twitter user reacted in a typical statement.
    Super Bowl advertisements have become an annual obsession as the expensive and targeted marketing to a huge audience has become a place where products are debuted for the first time. Super Bowl ads have also become an annual time to analyze and study the many marketing strategy, as well as the “hits and misses” of the ads seen during the game.

    It’s likely that the ad featuring King’s voice and words will likely be the source of analysis over the coming days. The ad might also reignite discussion on some of the decisions being made by Dexter King and Martin Luther King III regarding the use of their father’s image and words.

  • Newswire : At ‘Real State of Our Union’ Trump derided for ‘White Nationalist’ conduct

    By Barrington M. Salmon
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    Rev. Dr. William J. Barber lock arms with activists and audience members at the “Real State of Our Union”. PHOTO: Paulette Singleton/Trice Edney News Wire

    (TriceEdneyWire.com) – In stirring comments that were more sermon than speech, the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II derided the Trump administration Tuesday night during an “Alternate State of the Union’ gathering.
    As Trump delivered his first State of the Union Address at the U. S. Capital, Barber described him as the end-product of more than 100 years of attempts by White extremists to blunt any progress made by African-Americans and progressives in the U. S.
    “We’re witnessing a fundamental changing of our demographics around the world,” said Barber, a national activist, former president of the North Carolina NAACP and president and senior lecturer of Repairers of the Breach. “We see extremist policies in America today and it’s driven by the growing blackening and browning of America and a fusion of every creed, color and class.”
    He continued, “Those who embrace the Make America Great Again slogan are willing to work hard and cheat to undermine what is evolving in America. This is White hegemony and White nationalism strengthened by enormous wealth.”
    Rev. Barber’s analysis of Trump’s cynical attacks on non-whites, Barber’s deconstruction of America’s racial malady and his exhortation for African-Americans, progressives and other allies to join the movement against extremism, wrapped up a more than two-hour panel discussion involving leading political and Civil Rights activists, organizers educators, and thinkers in the black and Latino communities.
    The event, arranged and moderated by former News One anchor and news personality Roland Martin, was co-sponsored by the NAACP and titled, ‘The Real State of Our Union,’. It was one of dozens of progressive alternatives arranged around the country to counter Trump’s first State of the Union before a joint session of Congress.
    Rev. Barber, well known as an unapologetic voice of resistance to this administration’s hard move to the right, told an audience of several hundred people at Shiloh Baptist Church in Washington, DC that America is in the midst of a Third Reconstruction.
    “Our discussion aims to put a spotlight on a variety of issues that are vital to our community, and that we are sure will be overlooked in his State of the Union address on Tuesday,” said Martin in a statement released to the press.
    Hot topics ranged from attaining economic self-sufficiency, voter mobilization, the rightward tilt of judicial appointments, political and election strategy, organizing and the administration’s attacks against immigrants, the LGBTQ community and anyone not White, heterosexual and male.
    “His words, actions and appointments and all we’ve seen is a policy of division,” said Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “He has taken us back decades. We’ve seen a spike in hate crimes, Charlottesville, and his inability to condemn Neo-Nazis … it’s hard not to trace ugly hate and animus to this White House.”
    Clarke, Melanie Campbell of the Black Women’s Roundtable, NAACP President Derrick Johnson and other panelists warned about the danger posed to African-Americans, other people of color, the poor and the most vulnerable by Trump’s judicial appointments. In his first year, Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the Republican leadership have rammed through nominations to federal, district and circuit courts after eight years of holding up or blocking former President Barack Obama’s nominees.
    “This is a huge issue,” Clarke explained. There are 140 vacancies in federal courts. The judiciary has always mattered to Black people because it is a place of last resort. Ninety-nine percent of cases are heard in federal and district courts. Ninety-one percent of those Trump is putting forward are White and male and they are the fringe. He’s turning back the clock to the Jim Crow era.”
    A panel of millennials spoke with great passion about the failings of the two-party system, their general disdain for both parties and their desire to build infrastructures and institutions for, with and about Black people.
    NAACP President Derrick Johnson set the table with his insistence that Black people use their vote wisely. If 28,000 Black voters had not skipped choosing one of the candidates at the top of the ballot, Trump would not have won the election, he said.
    “We need to stop being emotional and focus on outcomes,” Johnson said. “We need to understand the political landscape because we seem to have forgotten. In a democracy, the vote is our currency. It’s nation-building time. We have to build it within the rules of building power.”
    Dayvon Love, director of Research and Public Policy at Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle, focused on the importance of developing opportunities and a pipeline into politics for African-Americans and holding Democrats’ feet to the fire to force them to do right by Black people.
    “We’ve had an exploitative relationship with Democrats,” he said. “We need political infrastructures. If the political infrastructure is outside of your community, you’re beholden to people outside.”
    Dr. Greg Carr, chair of Howard University’s History Department, offered caustic comments about Trump and the environment that he and his administration have fostered.
    “They’re extremists, there’s no such thing as the United States of America and Mike Pence is a Christian fundamentalist … Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan are wholly-owned subsidiaries of corporations and the Koch Brothers. Steven Miller has proposed cutting immigration. These people don’t give a damn. We’re appealing to a morality these people have never had.”
    Johnson and Campbell stressed the importance of Black people flexing their electoral muscles in the upcoming midterms and the 2020 general elections.
    “We have to increase our collective consciousness and lean in at least for the next five years,” said Johnson. “There are 88 legislative bodies up for election and we have to vote in all these races. Redistricting and the midterms are on the horizon. Folks, we have to lean into our collective consciousness and turn out to vote. Nothing else matters.”
    Campbell agreed. “We’re mad as heck, but we’re being more strategic with our politics,” she said. “We will not have anyone take our vote for granted. We’re seeing a power shift. Black women all over the country are starting political organizations, running and challenging the Democratic Party. More and more Black people don’t think the Democratic Party represents their interests.”

  • Newswire : CBC members back CFPB payday lending accountability actions

    By Charlene Crowell

     

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     U. S. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.)
    (TriceEdneyWire.com) – In the wake of a recent series of anti-consumer actions taken by Mick Mulvaney, the Trump-appointed Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Acting Director, a bicameral call for accountability was released on January 31. Led by Congresswoman Maxine Waters of California and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, two other Congressional Black Caucus Members, Congressmen Keith Ellison (MN) and Al Green (TX) joined Senators Richard Blumenthal (CT) and Jeff Merkley (OR) as signatories.
    Together, the group of lawmakers seek to know what prompted Mr. Mulvaney’s actions as well as his ties to the payday lending industry.
    A January 31 letter calls into question the following specific actions that have occurred over the past month:

    Halting implementation of the agency’s final rule preventing abusive payday lending (the ‘Payday Rule);
    Announcement of the Bureau’s intention to initiate a rulemaking process that appears designed to weaken the Payday Rule;
    Withdrawing a Bureau lawsuit against four online payday lenders who allegedly misled customers on interest rates that spanned a low of 440 percent to as high as 950 percent; and
    Ending an investigation of World Acceptance Corporation, a high-cost installment lender that began in 2014 after consumers complained of unaffordable loans and aggressive collection practices.

    “For too long, some payday, auto title, and installment lenders have taken advantage of American workers who need a little extra money to pay an unexpected medical bill or fix their car,” wrote the lawmakers. “For too many families, one unexpected expense or tight week traps them in a cycle of debt that lasts months or years…The rule finalized by the CFPB last October was carefully balanced to end that cycle of debt while ensuring that borrowers retain access to needed credit.”
    The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act that created the CFPB intended for it to be an independent agency, charged with serving as the consumer’s financial cop-on-the-beat. Its director was to be nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate to a five-year term of service. Additionally, CFPB was to secure its funding directly from the Federal Reserve Bank, rather than through Congress’ annual appropriations process that could enable powerful special interests to restrict necessary funding.
    Even though he Dodd-Frank Act also a defined succession plan for an Acting Director in the event of personnel changes, two people were appointed to this same role. One, Leandra English was lawfully appointed by the now-departed Director Richard Cordray, while another, Mr. Mulvaney, was appointed by President Trump. The lawmakers’ letter is addressed to both appointees.
    An appellate federal court will eventually decide who should be the legal Acting Director; but in the interim, Mulvaney leads CFPB while retaining his position as Director of the Office of Management and Budget. In his prior role as a South Carolina Congressman, he co-sponsored a bill to eliminate the CFPB and accepted nearly $63,000 in campaign donations from payday lenders. These donations included $4,500 from World Acceptance Corporation’s political action committee.
    “The CFPB spent five years honing the Payday Rule, conducting research and reviewing over one million comments from all types of stakeholders: from payday lender, to state regulators, to faith leaders,” wrote Ranking Members Warren and Waters.
    Now Mr. Mulvaney oversees the daily operations of the same Bureau that returned $12 billion to nearly 30 million consumers in about six years. Instead of regulating financial services, this Acting Director prefers allowing private enterprise to determine consumers’ choices – including those that are harmful and predatory. He also wants financial businesses to have more input on determining what regulations CFPB should use in their supervision and monitoring.
    As CFPB’s Acting Director, Mulvaney also wrote a letter to Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen advising that “for Second Quarter of Fiscal Year 2018, the Bureau is requesting $0.”
    Mulvaney added, “While this approximately $145 million may not make much of a dent in the deficit, the men and women at the Bureau are proud to do their part to be responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars.”
    When the federal deficit is hundreds of trillions of dollars, it strains credulity to believe that $145 million will lighten the nation’s debt. But an emerging pattern of the current Administration is to allow lengthy delays that could eventually become denials. As this column has previously reported, key consumer protections in student loans have been delayed as well, and through the Congressional Review Act, a rule that would have allowed consumers to have their own day in court to resolve financial and credit issues has also been rejected. Moreover, Mulvaney directed the CFPB to delay implementation of its prepaid card rule that was designed to help stop abusive fees for users.
    If sparing taxpayers unnecessary costs is the guiding force, then why has both the CFPB and Department of Education rejected earlier negotiated rulemaking and begun the process anew – at taxpayers’ expense?
    “I certainly understand the desire to protect taxpayer dollars,” said Debbie Goldstein, Executive Vice President with the Center for Responsible Lending, “but I think the mission of the CFPB is to protect the taxpayers, the American people, from lenders who target them for high-cost and unaffordable loans. And the best way to save Americans millions of dollars is by preventing predatory lending, not by draining the CFPB’s resources.”
    Charlene Crowell is the Center for Responsible Lending’s communications deputy director. She can be reached at charlene.crowell@responsiblelending.org.

  • Newswire : Hidden photo of Obama and Farrakhan released in new book

    In autobiography, Askia Muhammad tells why and how the photo was kept a secret

    By Hazel Trice Edney

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    Obama and Frrakhan at 2005 meeting of CBC
    This photo by Askia Muhammad that was hidden for 12 years has now been released in the journalist’s autobiography. Pictured from left to right are: Minister Farrakhan’s son-in-law, Leonard Farrakhan Muhammad; His son and security chief, Mustapha Farrakhan; U. S. Sen. Barack Obama; Minister Farrakhan’s son Joshua Farrakhan; Minister Louis Farrakhan, and the Rev. Willie F. Wilson, pastor of D.C.’s Union Temple Baptist Church.

    (TriceEdneyWire.com) – It was during a mid-2005 Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) meeting on Capitol Hill when award-winning journalist Askia Muhammad captured one of the most significant photos of his career.
    Muhammad had doggedly covered then Chicago Sen. Barack Obama since he “first laid eyes on him” at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. Now, here was the Senator in a warm conversation with constituent and fellow Chicagoan Minister Louis Farrakhan. As leader of the Nation of Islam, Farrakhan is another star in Black America, but one whose name is synonymous with controversy.

    Wasting no time, Muhammad snapped the news photo. But moments later, he faced a dilemma.
    Obama had already become the darling of national Democratic politics. And the scent of a presidential run was strong.
    Muhammad and others almost immediately realized that the public release of this photo could mean major trouble down the road. Mainly because of bigotry and fear-mongering, the public release of that photo could doom America’s chances of electing Obama as its first Black President.
    Muhammad had not even left the scene when he received a call and the photo was being summoned by a member of the Congressional Black Caucus. Muhammad ultimately surrendered the disk to Minister Farrakhan’s chief of staff. And it remained one of America’s best hidden secrets for the next 12 years.
    For the first time, more than a decade later, the glowing photograph of now former President Barack Obama and Minister Louis Farrakhan has been published in a book by Muhammad to be released Jan. 31 – “The Autobiography of Charles 67X”. Muhammad and some political observers still believe that if that photo had been released, it could have drawn enough fire – even from some of Obama’s supporters looking for excuses – to dent his chances of becoming President.
    “I gave the picture up at the time and basically swore secrecy,” Muhammad said in an exclusive interview with the Trice Edney News Wire this week. “But after the nomination was secured and all the way up until the inauguration; then for eight years after he was President, it was kept under cover.”
    As for any debate that the photo could have made a difference in the outcome of the Obama presidential election, Muhammad is emphatic: “I insist. It absolutely would have made a difference.”
    He has agreement in high places.
    “I do believe that it would have had a very, very negative affect in that given moment as far as the candidacy of candidate Obama at that time,” says Dr. Shayla Nunnally, president of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists. Her opinion was based largely on the “negative stereotypes about Muslim Americans about Black people and about their allegiance to the United States,” which have often been twisted and used to fit bigoted agendas – especially after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
    “On top of that,” Nunnally said, “people have always characterized Minister Farrakhan as being a combative figure in American politics. That adds another layer.” Nunnally, a professor of political science who also teaches in the Africana Studies Institute at the University of Connecticut, specializes in public opinion, political behavior, race and politics.
    She questioned what the release of the photo will mean “even now because there’s so many conspiracy theories still floating.”
    Obama, who is a Christian, has constantly been the target of bigoted attacks, Nunnally pointed out. When a woman called him an Arab during a public forum, even his re-election opponent Sen. John McCain retrieved the microphone and corrected her, saying, “No ma’am. He’s a decent family man.” Nunnally also recalled how former Secretary of State Colin Powell once weighed in against negative stereotyping of Muslims saying, “He’s a Christian…But the really right answer is, what if he is” a Muslim?
    Nunnally concluded, “There are many, many, many layers of what that picture can represent to people in their various perceptions. So, I say this to mean that I can see that the release of that photo in that given moment, it would have been highly controversial.”
    Also, pictured in the photo are Minister Farrakhan’s son-in-law, Leonard Farrakhan Muhammad; His son and security chief, Mustapha Farrakhan; Minister Farrakhan’s son Joshua Farrakhan; and the Rev. Willie Wilson, executive producer of the program for Farrakhan’s Million Man March in 1995 and a chairman of the 20th anniversary.
    In an interview, Wilson says he doesn’t recall the photo and didn’t know he was in it. But hearing the description, he also was certain it could have hurt Obama’s campaign.
    “I’m sure it would,” Wilson said. “Given all of the furor related to the sermon that his pastor, Jeremiah Wright did, I’m sure that it would more than likely have had a tremendous effect on his candidacy.”
    Wilson says Farrakhan is so controversial because, “He speaks truth and this is a country that has in so many ways attempted to cover up the realities of its wrong doings of which Minister Farrakhan is quite vocal in bringing to light.”

    The book tells of other notables who knew about the photograph and never divulged it. In addition to narratives of pivotal moments of his life, the autobiography is also a book of Muhammad’s poetry.
    Columnist and political observer A. Peter Bailey, anticipating the book release, says he believes the photo would have created controversy for Obama, but could not have caused him to lose the election or his re-election because of the groundswell of Black voter support for him. “It could have done some damage,” Bailey said. “But nothing could have stopped the election because Black support would have countered it.”

  • Newswire : ADL Report: White Supremacists murdered 18 people in 2017

    Beatrice Dupuy
    Posted with permission from Newsweek
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    Klu Klux Klan members
    White supremacists not only shed their masks in 2017 but unleashed one of the deadliest years for extremist violence in almost half a century. Over the past 12 months, white supremacists committed the largest number of domestic-extremist related killings, helping to make 2017 the fifth-deadliest year for extremist violence since 1970, according to a newly released report from the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism.
    The center counted a total of 34 people killed by domestic extremists, of which 18 were killed by white supremacists, more than double the number of the previous year. In the last decade, right-wing extremism made up 71 percent of extremist-related murders compared to 26 percent of murders by Islamic extremists.
    The overall number of deaths attributed to domestic extremists has declined—from 71 people in 2016 and 69 in 2015. The report attributes the fall to a drop in extremist-related mass-shooting sprees like the one Omar Mateen carried out when he killed 49 people at the Orlando Pulse nightclub in 2016.
    Even with the decline, the resurgence in white supremacy has politicians raising questions. Democratic Senator Kamala Harris tweeted out Tuesday that she was deeply troubled that the Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen “failed to mention” domestic acts of terror during a Tuesday Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on threats to the U.S.
    Nielsen was testifying on a new report by the Department of Homeland Security that studied the number of immigrants taken into custody for terrorism-related activities. The report was part of President Donald Trump’s executive order to protect the nation from “foreign terrorist entry” to the U.S.
    “It is deeply troubling that when talking about threats to our nation, Secretary Nielsen failed to mention a report that talks about some of the most rampant terror attacks that face our nation—domestic acts of terror, including white supremacist extremists,” Harris said in a tweet.
    Experts say that the emphasis placed by the government on foreign-born extremists as opposed to domestic-related extremists is part of a larger problem. Anti-Defamation League’s Director of the Center on Extremism, Oren Segal, said the report was a skewed version of terrorism threats in the U.S. by leaving out domestic-terror incidents.
    “In a time when the public discussion still tends to focus on foreign terrorist organizations, it is important to remember that white supremacists in particular still very much pose a threat in this country,” he said
    The Anti-Defamation League report cites several incidents of white supremacist killings in 2017 including a school shooting in Aztec, New Mexico. William Edward Atchison, 21, entered his old high school by pretending to be a student and then killed two students before turning the gun on himself in December. Atchinson posted online in pro-Trump and alt-right forums, with usernames including Future Mass Shooter, and ranted about his racist ideology, according to The Daily Beast.
    The report found that murders carried out by white supremacists in 2017 had ties to the alt-right, a movement that spread online and sprung into rallies and protests where supporters share views seen by many as anti-semitic and racist. The movement entered the mainstream in part thanks to the emergence of Donald Trump. The president’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon once called the publication he until recently ran, Breitbart News, ” the platform for the alt-right.”
    Segal said white supremacists are now emboldened and their recent activity, including holding rallies and using social media to radicalize people, must be taken seriously to “mitigate and protect” Americans from next the next attack.
    “We just don’t have the luxury to ignore any extremist threat in this country,” he said.

  • Newswire : Dr. Wyatt Tee Walker, Civil Rights Icon, Chief of Staff to Dr. King, dies at 88

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    Dr. Wyatt Tee Walker speaks at Virginia Union University’s annual Community
    Leaders Breakfast in Richmond in January 2008.
    Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Richmond Free Press
    (TriceEdneyWire.com) – Dr. Wyatt Tee Walker Jr. did all he could to advance civil rights during his long life. He is credited with being the key strategist behind many of the civil rights protests that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led in seeking to end the racial injustice of Jim Crow in the 1960s.
    During his four years as Dr. King’s chief of staff, he helped raise the money for and orchestrate major civil rights protests. Dr. Walker came to Dr. King’s attention after leading protests against segregation in Petersburg that resulted in his repeated arrests. At the time, he was pastor of Petersburg’s Gillfield Baptist Church, which he led for seven years.
    On New Year’s Day in 1959, he led a “Pilgrimage of Prayer” in Richmond against school segregation. Dr. Walker’s contributions to justice and freedom in America are being remembered following his death Tuesday, Jan. 23, 2018, in Chester, near Petersburg, where he lived for the last 14 years. He was 88.
    Funeral arrangements were incomplete at Free Press deadline on Wednesday. The Rev. Al Sharpton, a family friend, announced the death of Dr. Walker, who also was the first board chairman of Rev. Sharpton’s National Action Network.
    “A true giant and irreplaceable leader,” Rev. Sharpton stated in releasing the information on Dr. Walker’s death on Twitter. “A huge tree has fallen.”
    “America has lost a great civil rights leader,” said Henry L. Marsh III, a retired civil rights attorney who served as Richmond, Va.’s first African-American mayor and later as a state senator. “He was a Virginia civil rights leader who earned a place on the national stage. The world is a better place because of his presence,” said Mr. Marsh, who was deeply engaged in attacking segregation and racial injustice in the courts.
    Dr. Walker spoke against bigotry and racial oppression from pulpits in Petersburg, Atlanta, New York City and on five continents. He also was a leading voice in protesting apartheid in South Africa and was part of the team that helped supervise South Africa’s first free elections in 1994 when the late Nelson Mandela was elected that country’s president.
    He also advocated for affordable housing and better schools in New York during his 37 years as the pastor of Canaan Baptist Church of Christ in Harlem. The grandson of a former slave, Dr. Walker was born just before the start of the Great Depression on Aug. 16, 1929, in Brockton, Mass. He was the 10th of 11 children of the Rev. John Wise Walker and Maude Pinn Walker. His father read both Greek and Hebrew and was a member of the 1899 graduating class of Virginia Union University. His mother also was a VUU graduate.
    Although the family had little money after his father became pastor of a church in New Jersey where he grew up, Dr. Walker said his father instilled in him his passion for fighting racial injustice. “My father was what we called a ‘race man,’” Dr. Walker said. “He reacted to anything that smacked of racial injustice or prejudice. I was under that influence growing up. He was my first hero.”
    Dr. Walker came to Richmond after World War II to start his studies at VUU. A standout student who went on to earn his undergraduate and ministry degrees at the university, he began his civil rights work while a student. Refusing to accept second class status, he often was put off Richmond street cars for refusing to move to the back. After being called to the Gillfield Baptist Church pulpit in 1953, he preached, protested and courted arrest.
    The first of his 17 arrests came when he led a group of African-Americans through the whites-only door of the Petersburg Public Library, one of his many acts of civil disobedience. He also served as president of the Petersburg Branch NAACP, state director of the Congress of Racial Equality and founder of the Petersburg Improvement Association, which was modeled on the Montgomery Improvement Association that guided the bus boycott in 1956 in that Alabama city.In 1960, Dr. Walker went to Atlanta to join Dr. King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference as its executive director after previously serving on the board.
    He had met Dr. King when both were presidents of their seminary classes, he at VUU and Dr. King at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, where Dr. Walker later would earn his doctorate. Through 1964, Dr. Walker served as the SCLC executive director and Dr. King’s right-hand man. Dr. Walker raised money to support the SCLC and also devised boycotts and demonstrations for Dr. King, most notably in the spring of 1963 in Birmingham, Ala., under the code name “Project C.” The C stood for “confrontation,” Dr. Walker recalled in an interview.
    “The federal government was against us, the local communities were against us, the judges were against us, but we managed to do it, and I guess we found the strength to do it because it was a moral fight,” he told an interviewer in 2006. “I was fully committed to nonviolence, and I believe with all my heart that for the Civil Rights Movement to prove itself, its nonviolent actions had to work in Birmingham,” he said.
    “If it wasn’t for Birmingham, there wouldn’t have been a Selma march, there wouldn’t have been a 1965 civil rights bill. Birmingham was the birthplace and affirmation of the nonviolent movement in America.”
    Dr. Walker played a key role in circulating Dr. King’s famous “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” penned in April 1963, that argued for civil disobedience as a legitimate response to racial segregation. Dr. Walker also helped organize the August 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which was capped by Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.
    Historians and those who worked with Dr. King argue that Dr. Walker’s management skills enabled the SCLC to grow from a largely volunteer organization into a crucial, professional element of the Civil Rights Movement, with a $1 million annual budget and 100 full-time workers. Dr. Walker’s “brilliance as a strategist was his greatest contribution to the Civil Rights Movement,” according to the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who also worked with Dr. King and went on to found and lead the national Rainbow PUSH Coalition.
    He knew how to harness the energies of people who were excited about social change and how to use the church as the center of his advocacy for the poor, the marginalized and the oppressed,” Rev. Jackson said. Dr. Walker left the SCLC in 1964 to become pastor at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem and to work with the Negro Heritage Library.
    In 1966, he became president of the organization whose goal was publishing works of African-Americans and pushing for inclusion in textbooks information on the role of African-Americans in U.S. history. In 1966, at Dr. King’s recommendation, he became interim pastor of Canaan Baptist Church, a post he held until a series of strokes forced him to retire in 2004.
    Dr. Walker led the church in developing housing units with reduced rents, retail stores and apartments and a service center for elderly people. He also fought to remove drug dealers from streets around the church, and when he thought police were ignoring the problem, he took action.
    For example, in April 1970, Dr. Walker preached a Sunday sermon through a bullhorn outside the Teen City pizza parlor that was notorious for drug trafficking. “We are trying to save our children,” he said, before turning his bullhorn toward tenements across the street.
    “You, up there in the windows,” he said, “tell your kids to keep out of Teen City.”
    At one point, the Harlem drug kingpin Frank Lucas “put a hit out on me,” Dr. Walker recalled, “because I was effectively thwarting the drug traffic.”
    He said he ignored warnings that his work against illicit narcotic sales was too dangerous. “I had been involved in the struggle in the Deep South, so I was accustomed to dangerous situations,” he said. “It was tough to frighten me because I was so convinced that God would take care of me.”
    Dr. Walker also was considered an authority on sacred music. Along with composing religious music, Dr. Walker also was the author of 10 books and articles dealing with the ties between music, religious traditions and social change. He also was noted for his photography and for founding Harlem’s first charter school in 1999.
    Dr. Walker chaired the boards of Freedom National Bank until it collapsed in 1990 under the weight of risky loans and of the Consortium for Central Harlem Development, which Canaan Baptist stated was responsible for $100 million in housing. In the years since his retirement, the aging and frail Dr. Walker, who needed a wheelchair to move around, received numerous invitations to speak. He used his speeches to continue to encourage activism on the racial justice front and was outspoken in support of Black Lives Matter.
    In a speech a few years ago during the holiday for Dr. King, he expressed his concern that the legislative victories of the 1960s at the height of the movement — including the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 — “seduced us into becoming too comfortable.”
    “It is insufficient for us to come together on (Dr. King’s) birthday, sometimes in an artificial way, White and Black together, and sing ‘We Shall Overcome’ and hold hands and get a warm feeling and then go back to business as usual in White racist America,” he said.
    Survivors include his wife of 68 years, Theresa Edwards Walker; a daughter, Patrice W. Powell; three sons, Robert, Earl and Wyatt Tee Walker Jr.; his sister, Mary Holley; and two grandchildren.

  • Newswire : Ghanaian women up against U. S. owned gold mine that destroyed their farms

    ghanaian woman yaa konadu
    Ghanaian woman farmer

    Jan. 8, 2018 (GIN) – On the website of the Colorado-based Newmont mine, the top page reads in bold letters: “Culture of Zero Harm.”

    This might come as a surprise to the Ghanaian women of Dormaa-Kantinka whose farms have been threatened and/or seized by the company many thousands of miles away.

    Yaa Konadu, a 74 year old grandmother, was given the bad news from one of her workers. “Newmont has destroyed the farm,” she was told. Many of her cocoa trees were ruined. A red notice with a case number was the only sign of the culprit of this devastation.

    In a heart-rending report by U.S.-based environmentalists in the latest Sierra Club magazine titled “Fools Gold”, the story of women in the central Brong-Ahafo region of Ghana, fighting to keep their family farms against the efforts of the second largest gold mining company to take them, unfolds.

    Newmont reportedly offered Yaa Konadu 1,500 Ghanaian cedis, or $343, for her eight acres of farmland that had supported her family for generations – land she’d inherited from her grandmother – and about $50 for the small farmhouse. There was no direct negotiation, she told Sierra Club, and she accepted the sum feeling she had no choice but she refused the $50 for her home as woefully inadequate.

    The U.S. company faces opposition from local Ghanaians. According to Ghana’s “The Chronicle” of Aug. 3, “irate youth” living within the Newmont Ghana Gold Ahafo Mine Area staged a massive demonstration against the company for failing to hire local workers in the better-paying jobs while employing staff from outside the area. Further, they told reporter Michael Boateng, the company failed to honor training programs for the locals and neglected locally-owned companies for awards of contracts.

    Newmont claims it has paid $36 million and $42 million as royalties as taxes respectively, with $363 million spent in the Ghanaian economy.

    Mine manager Derek Boateng defended the company but acknowledged that employment expectations and resettlement challenges remained huge problems. Also, illegal mining by small-scale miners known as “galamsey” was a “great menace” which government, stakeholders and other relevant institutions had to to stamp out, he said.

    Meanwhile, chemicals used in gold mining have killed fish near the Newmont Processing facility. Residents and activists with the Wassa Association of Communities Affected by Mining blame a cyanide spill. Also, despite claims by the company of investment in women’s initiatives, the rates of unwanted pregnancies have increased and schoolgirls point the finger at Newmont workers, nurse Regina Dufie told the Sierra reporter.

  • Newswire : Congressional Black Caucus plans protest of Trump at State of the Union

    By Lauren Victoria Burke (NNPA Newswire Contributor)
    During a lengthy, members-only meeting on Capitol Hill on January 19, members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) discussed various options to protest the current President of the United States. Their protest plans centered around the annual State of the Union address.
    President Donald Trump’s second State of the Union address is scheduled for January 30.
    The meeting the CBC held to talk over State of the Union protest plans occurred only hours after 66 members of the House voted to act on impeaching the President. That effort was led once again by Black Caucus member Rep. Al Green (D-Texas). Rep. Green’s second impeachment try failed 355-66. Three Democrats voted “present.”
    Weeks after Donald Trump reportedly called Haiti, El Salvador and the continent of Africa “shithole countries” during a meeting on immigration with members of Congress in the Oval Office, many members have had it.
    CBC members who attended the discussion confirmed that several options of protesting President Trump were discussed including walking out, wearing African themed garb and even not showing up to the State of the Union at all. The more vocal members included Reps. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), Greg Meeks (D-N.Y.) and Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.).
    During an interview with Buzzfeed on January 17, days before the meeting, Congressional Black Caucus Chairman Cedric Richmond (D-La.) mentioned the CBC might hold its own State of the Union.
    “We will…discuss how we want to respond to the president’s State of the Union. We could go, we could go and walk out, we could go and hold up fists…or we could not go, or we could hold our own ‘State of the Union,’” Richmond said.
    A few Black Caucus members have already stated that they will not attend the president’s State of the Union address. They include Reps. John Lewis (D-Ga.), Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.).
    Some CBC members are concerned about Congress’ largest caucus not being unified in protest, whatever form the protest may take. Other members wanted to make sure serious issues are highlighted and expressed concerns about the protest taking attention away from serious policy discussion. But in the age of former reality TV star turned President Donald Trump, others say that the best response is to fight fire with fire.
    With protests in the air and in the streets around the first anniversary of the start of the Trump presidency, the timing of any protest the CBC may undertake on the night of the State of the Union is likely to receive serious media attention.

    Regarding Rep. Green’s impeachment attempts, which House leadership is in opposition of, Green pointed out that Trump, “has by his statements brought the high office of president of the United States in contempt, ridicule, disgrace and disrepute; has sown discord among the people of the United States; has demonstrated that he is unfit to be president; and has betrayed his trust as president of the United States to the manifest injury of the people of the United States and has committed a high misdemeanor in office.”
    Rep. Green’s form of protest was a legislative one. On the night of the State of the Union, we are likely to see a more theatrical display.
    Lauren Victoria Burke is an independent journalist, political analyst and contributor to the NNPA Newswire and BlackPressUSA.com. She can be reached by email at LBurke007@gmail.com and on Twitter at @LVBurke.

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  • Newswire : NAACP and Africa-America Institute announce Alliance

    Partnership includes Pre-K to College Curriculum on the African Diaspora

    By: Malik Russell/ mrussell@naacpnet.org

     

    derrickjohnson_01_naacp_web120.jpg

                                                   Derrick Johnson, NAACP President

    PASEDENA, CA (January 15, 2018)—On Monday, January 15, 2018, the holiday marking the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the NAACP and the Africa-America Institute announced a groundbreaking partnership during the 49th NAACP Image Awards.
    The NAACP will work with the AAI on the development and distribution of a curriculum designed to highlight the accomplishments, achievements and history of Africa and its Diaspora.
    “It’s appropriate that on a day that we honor Dr. King as well as promote positive images of people of color, we announce to the world a partnership that includes a curriculum, learning exchange and a network for advocacy and activism on behalf of those of African descent in the United States and abroad, “said Derrick Johnson, President and CEO of the NAACP.
    “AAI has a long history of academic exchange and educational meetings between Africa and America. Now is an extraordinary time and opportunity to partner with the NAACP and together connect the more than 42 million Afro-descendants with the brilliance of the African history and its contribution to modern civilization,” added Kofi Appenteng, President of the Africa-America Institute.
    The curriculum from the NAACP/AAI Alliance will include content such as Africa’s Great Civilizations, the critically acclaimed series by Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Partners and NAACP chapters will benefit from organized screenings and lessons with an early education focus on positive identity formation and a more advanced curriculum that includes studies in social sciences.

    A campaign kick-off will take place in February of 2018 as a part of Black History Month.
    ABOUT THE AFRICA-AMERICA INSTITUTE (AAI)
    The Africa-America Institute is the premier U.S.-based international organization that works to increase the capacity of African individuals and institutions through higher education initiatives, leadership development, professional workforce training, convening activities, program implementation and management.

    ABOUT THE NAACP
    Founded in 1909, the NAACP is the nation’s oldest and largest nonpartisan civil rights organization. Its members throughout the United States and the world are the premier advocates for civil rights in their communities. You can read more about the NAACP’s work and our six “Game Changer” issue areas here.