The Greene County Democrat

Category: Newswire

  • Obama’s latest gift to his detractors: a $400,000 Wall Street speaking gig

    By Shawn Langlois, Marketwatch

    Former President Barack ObamaFormer President Barack Obama

    Barack Obama once told CBS’s “60 Minutes” that he didn’t “run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street.” Of course, he didn’t say anything about them helping him out.
    So yes, after a political career often spent unloading on banking industry “fat cats” for their profit lust and splashy lifestyle, Obama has agreed to a $400,000 speaking engagement on healthcare policies at bond broker Cantor Fitzgerald, according to Fox Business.
    In other words, one day of inspirational words and fist bumps with some of Wall Street’s finest will net the former president what it took him an entire year to earn while calling shots at the White House.
    The big payout would also put his price at double the average amount commanded by Bill and Hillary Clinton on the circuit, where the duo cashed in on more than $150 million over the years, according to CNN numbers crunched last year.
    The fact that Obama, like so many presidents and politicians before him, is chasing Wall Street cake shouldn’t come as a surprise. The amount, however, is rather eye-popping. Add this to their $60-million book deal — a whopping four times Bill Clinton’s post-presidency offer — and the Obamas should get by just fine in their retirement years.
    A pair of popular Democratic Party senators took shots at former president Barack Obama‘s $400,000 speaking fee for a future Wall Street event, a rate that equaled his yearly presidential salary. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders shared their opinions about the fee with the media, although other Democrats and liberals have taken similar speaking engagements in times past.
    In speaking with SiriusXM’s Alter Family Politics show, Sen. Warren of Massachusetts didn’t mince words in answering Andy Cohen‘s inquiry about the fee. “I was troubled by that,” said Warren, writes Yahoo News. “One of the things I talk about in the book [the recently-published This Fight Is Our Fight: The Battle to Save America’s Middle Class] is the influence of money. I describe it as a snake that slithers through Washington. And that it shows up in so many different ways here in Washington.”
    While Warren’s point that Wall Street’s influence on politics is troublesome, Obama is not in a position to run for office nor has made it known he has any aims to lobby to sitting politicians on behalf of the finance world.
    Bloomberg’s Steven Dennis spoke with Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, also levied his criticism. “I think it’s unfortunate. President Obama is now a private citizen and he can do anything he wants to but I think it’s unfortunate,” said Sanders, while adding the word “unfortunate” a third time in his reply to Dennis..
    The Democratic Party and liberals, in general, have turned a critical eye towards Wall Street. Yet the practice of former government leaders and officials using their expertise to earn money in the speaking arena is not new. Former president Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke have all taken high-paying speaker fees in varying intervals.
    Also in place are lobbying bans that Obama himself instituted while in office that would hinder former employees to address government officials on behalf of Wall Street and other special interests.
    To be sure, senators Warren and Sanders have long-standing issues with Wall Street’s political influence and have said in previous times they felt Obama took it easy on financial institutions while shunning middle-class concerns. Obama has yet to respond to the criticism.

  • Virunga Park warden in the Congo tapped for Grassroots Activist Prize

    Rodrigue Katembo
    Rodrigue Katembo

    Apr. 24, 2017 (GIN) – As a child soldier at the age of 14, Rodrigue Katembo learned his survival skills in dangerous times. Belgium had granted independence to the Congo but it was little more than a piece of paper after years of colonial rule.

    After a U.S.-led coup in 1961 that removed legally-elected Patrice Lumumba, the nation’s prime minister, years of repression would follow under the dictator Joseph Mobutu. Foreign companies quickly moved in to exploit the Congo’s rich natural resources.

    Despite the destructive actions of poachers and oil drillers, the nature sanctuary known as Virunga National Park continued to be a refuge to invaluable biodiversity and rare animals such as the legendary and critically endangered mountain gorillas. Africa’s oldest national park and the crown jewel of Congo’s ecotourism, Virunga was named a World Heritage Site in 1979. And as fate would have it, a former soldier, Rodrigue Katembo, would become its protector.

    Rescued from war, Katembo returned to school, studied biology and soon became warden of Virunga’s central sector—an area of interest to oil explorers. A British company Soco had already begun seismic testing in the area by the time Katembo arrived. Refusing their bribes, Katembo instead gathered video footage of their actions – a dangerous task – that was later compiled into the Academy Award-nominated Netflix doc ‘Virunga’.

    Amid growing public outrage by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, conservation groups such as the World Wildlife Fund, citizen petition drives, UNESCO, among many others, Soco gave up its oil license in Block V. Declining populations of hippos and elephants have stabilized. Civilians are free to access water and fish at Lake Edwards. And Katembo continues to protect the park.

    Katembo paid an enormous price for his activism, however. In 2013, he was arrested and tortured for 17 days. He returned to duty immediately after his release.

    Now the 41 year old warden’s good deeds will be rewarded. This month he was named one of six winners of the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize, the world’s largest award honoring grassroots environmental activists.

    In addition to a monetary prize, Goldman Prize winners each receive a bronze sculpture called the Ouroboros. Common to many cultures around the world, the Ouroboros, which depicts a serpent biting its tail, is a symbol of nature’s power of renewal.

    More information about the prize and this year’s winners can be found on the website http://www.goldmanprize.org

  • Black doctors earn less than White doctors

    By Stacy M. Brown (NNPA Newswire Contributor)
    Black doctors

    African-American physicians earn 15 percent less than White physicians—an average of $262,000 compared to $303,000—according to Medscape’s 2017 Physicians Compensation Report.
    Approximately 19,200 physicians across 26 areas of medicine were asked questions about annual compensation, race, gender, geography and job satisfaction.
    The report, detailed by CBS News, revealed that African-American doctors are less likely to say they feel fairly compensated, with only half agreeing that they’re earning what they should.
    “Fifty-percent of African-American physicians don’t feel fairly compensated,” the report’s editor Leslie Kane, a senior director of Medscape Business of Medicine, told CBS.
    Racial and gender discrimination may certainly be a factor, Kane said, but there are other factors as well. For example, if a doctor treats more Medicaid patients, their reimbursement is usually lower, since employer-insured patients tend to pay better.
    How many hours a doctor works and whether they’re in private practice or a clinic can also explain some inequities in pay. “Tons of factors play into how much a physician makes,” she said.
    The survey found that the gender pay gap is narrower among younger doctors. Male doctors ages 55 to 69 make 27 percent more than women, but the divide shrinks to 18 percent in physicians under the age of 34.
    Being a doctor pays well, but there are still major discrepancies when it comes to paychecks within the medical profession. For the first time, the annual report looked at race as well as gender and other factors, revealing some significant disparities in pay.
    Physicians’ annual salaries averaged $294,000, with specialists earning about $100,000 more than primary care doctors. Overall, average pay has risen by $88,000 over the seven years Medscape has been conducting this survey—an increase attributed to intense competition for doctors among hospitals and health care systems.
    The three highest-paying specialties were orthopedics (average annual compensation: $489,000), plastic surgery ($440,000) and cardiology ($410,000). They earned well over twice as much as the average pediatrician ($202,000) and family physician ($209,000), the two lowest-paying categories.
    A deeper dive into the data shows male doctors take home bigger paychecks in both primary care and specialty areas such as orthopedics and surgery. Male primary care physicians made 15 percent more than women in 2016, while male specialists earned 31 percent more than their female colleagues.
    Part of the reason may be that women are more likely to choose lower-paying specialties, Kane said. “One of the things we look at is why there is this overall disparity. We look at what specialties women are going into and they go into less well-paying areas,” she said.
    “Fifty-three percent of pediatricians are women, one of lowest paid specialties. Thirty-nine percent of family physicians are women, also a lower-paying area,” Kane said. When it comes to the more highly paid medical specialties, only 9 percent of women are orthopedists and only 20 percent of general surgeons are female, Kane added.
    African-American doctors typically work in primary care rather than specialties, the survey noted. The annual compensation survey delved into race for the first time, said Kane, who has edited the report for seven years.
    The report revealed higher salaries in rural states. Doctors in North Dakota are the highest paid in the U.S. followed by Alaska, South Dakota and Nebraska.
    Washington D.C. counts as the lowest, while New York hovers toward the bottom of the list, which Kane and others chalk up to supply and demand; plenty of doctors cluster in big cities, while rural areas need to offer more money to attract staff.
    Patients may be glad to know that regardless of pay, most doctors like what they do: eight out of 10 physicians said they’d still choose medicine if they had the chance to pick a career all over again.

  • New study: Black millennials more optimistic about their future than Whites, Hispanics

    Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from Tarket Market News
    MR-VIsion-national-blacks-optimistic-attitudes-graphic

    (TriceEdneyWire.com) A newly released study of Millennials reveals that Black consumers between the age of 18-35 are more optimistic about their futures than Hispanics, Asians and Whites of the same age. Young African-Americans were also far more likely (59 percent) to say “anyone can achieve their dreams if they try hard enough.”

    The report is based on 2016 data from a collaborative research study conducted by Richards/Lerma (known for its expertise in Hispanic market advertising) and The University of Texas, Stan Richards School of Advertising and Public Relations. It was designed to gain a more thorough understanding of the complexities of today’s highly diverse multicultural Millennial group.

    “One of the most staggering findings of all in the midst of our nation’s current racial upheaval is that Black Millennials are more optimistic than the other Millennial segments. Although they are less likely to say they are currently satisfied with life, they are the most optimistic about the future,” the report says.
    The study, “Millennials Deconstructed,” consisted of a national online sample of Black, Hispanic, Asian, and White Millennials between the ages of 18 and 34 and Hispanics 35+ for comparison, and explored three separate topics: political beliefs and attitudes, the American dream, and media behavior. A series of qualitative one-on-one interviews were conducted following the quantitative study to gain additional insights into survey findings.

    “Although our initial intent in this report was to strictly define and deconstruct the American Dream by racial/ethnic segment, a much more interesting story emerged after analyzing the results,” the report says. “When zooming into the differences between the segments, the data reached out and smacked us with untold cultural stories that challenge popular notions about each race and ethnicity. While the differences between the way the groups define and relate to the American Dream are interesting, what’s far more compelling is how their cultural and ethnic background shapes their responses in counterintuitive ways. In other words, it’s not only ‘the what’ we want to talk about, it’s the often neglected how and why.”

  • Trump’s avoidance of Black Press reveals tense relations

    News Analysis By Paul Delaney

    omarosa-cherissmayphoto2.jpg

     Omarosa Manigault, assistant to President Trump and communications director for the White House Office of Public Liaison. PHOTO: Cheriss May
    Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Center for American Progress
    At the very beginning of the new administration, and probably in a moment of hubris, Omarosa Manigault, an aide to President Donald Trump, promised that the first newspaper interview with the new president would go to a member of the black press. Nobody took her seriously. In fact, such a meeting has yet to occur, prompting me to think that, given the disastrous encounters with other black groups—such as black college presidents—perhaps it is best that such a meeting never happens.
    As someone who began his career working for a black-owned newspaper, I’m well aware that those of us who have toiled in the black media are used to being ignored or mistreated by public officials. I never expected President Trump to meet with the black press. Like the community that spawned them, black journalists have always felt the sting of second-class citizenship.
    The recent to-do between White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer and April Ryan—the White House correspondent and Washington bureau chief for American Urban Radio Networks, a consortium of black-oriented radio stations—is an example. Spicer chided her as he evaded her question about a white man killing a black man in New York. “Stop shaking your head again,” Spicer hectored Ryan. There is nothing new about such patronizing, bordering on racist, behavior.
    From the beginning—slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, Jim Crow segregation, lynchings, and discrimination of all types—reporters and editors from the black press took on the racism and the racists of the world, shining a bright spotlight on such evils as most of their counterparts in the white media took pains to ignore. In some cases, especially in the South, white reporters and editors encouraged the racist views of the day. At a conference of journalists a few years ago, keynote speaker Hodding Carter III observed that in the South during the 1960s, “the average Southern newspaper was … bigoted.” He should know. His family owned the Delta Democrat-Times, a rare liberal newspaper in Greenville, Mississippi.
    Although black media was the stepchild of American journalism, it focused attention on many newsworthy acts that downtown dailies ignored. Black reporters working for black publishers and broadcasters tackled some of the worst cases of violence—and at times led the charge. I remember the pride of fellow staffers at the Atlanta Daily World after a campaign by the paper saved a black man from Georgia’s electric chair. And who can forget the chilling coffin photos of the mutilated body of Chicago teenager Emmett Till—who was lynched in Mississippi—published in Jet magazine.
    During the current newsroom downturn that has seen dwindling numbers of readers, listeners, and revenue, the black press has taken a heavier hit than its white counterparts. How bad is it? One black publisher agonized over whether to accept advertising from the Trump campaign. She ended up rejecting overtures—and ad money—from the campaign.
    “I could not in good conscience take the money,” she explained during a private dinner that I attended last year with a group of black journalists.
    President Trump and most African Americans are off to a terrible start, not surprising given the heavy black vote against him and the atrocious gaffes he and his appointees continue to make regarding nonwhite folks. Given his actions and appointees thus far, black people have reason for deep distrust.
    The few occasions of personal contact between President Trump and African Americans have been awkward and/or disastrous, enough to assume he will keep such intercourse to a minimum. During a White House meeting last month, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) said he informed Trump that “his language describing African-American communities has been ‘hurtful’ and ‘insulting.’” Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) was one of first leaders to publicly call for Trump’s impeachment. What’s more, Waters was among a handful of members of Congress who refused to attend his inauguration and refused to join fellow black congressional leaders in attending the White House meeting.
    Black media have kept up a constant drumbeat against the Trump administration; we can expect that to continue, and possibly intensify. One issue sure to bubble up repeatedly—meetings with President Trump. As a former colleague at The New York Times, E.R. Shipp, News
    So with nuts, neophytes and revisionists running the Trump asylum, one might wonder why 70 or so presidents, chancellors and advocates for historically black colleges and universities—HBCUs—accepted a “getting-to-know-you” White House invitation.
    I suspect the same sentiment will apply to members of the black media, if they’re ever invited to meet with the president.
    Paul Delaney, a veteran print journalist, spent 23 years with The New York Times as an editor, reporter, and foreign correspondent. He began his career at two black-owned newspapers, the Baltimore Afro-American and the Atlanta Daily World, before moving on to a succession of other newspapers, including the Dayton Daily News in Ohio and the now-closed Washington Star. He was a founding member of the National Association of Black Journalists and served as the chairman of the journalism department at the University of Alabama from 1992 to 1996. He is currently completing a memoir on his career.

  • New Orleans begins removing Confederate monuments, under police guard

    By: Christopher Mele, The New York Times

    Workers in N. O. take down monument

    Workers dismantle an obelisk dedicated to the Battle of Liberty Place, which commemorated whites who tried to topple a biracial post-Civil War government.AP
    New Orleans on Monday began removing four monuments dedicated to the era of the Confederacy and its aftermath, capping a prolonged battle about the future of the memorials, which critics deemed symbols of racism and intolerance and which supporters viewed as historically important.
    Workers dismantled an obelisk, which was erected in 1891 to honor members of the Crescent City White League who in 1874 fought in the Reconstruction-era Battle of Liberty Place against the racially integrated New Orleans police and state militia, Mayor Mitch Landrieu said in a statement.
    The monument, which was sometimes used as a rallying point by David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan, has stirred debate for decades. Local leaders unsuccessfully tried to remove it in 1981 and 1993.
    The workers were dressed in flak jackets, helmets and scarves to conceal their identities because of concerns about their safety. Police officers watched from a nearby hotel. Pieces of the 15,000-pound monument were put on a truck and hauled away.

    Other monuments expected to be removed include a bronze statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee in a traffic circle, named Lee Circle, in the city’s central business district since 1884; an equestrian statue of P.G.T. Beauregard, a Confederate general; and a statue of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy.
    Citing security risks and threats to contractors seeking to do the work, the city would not reveal details about the removal of the other statues. The four monuments will be stored in a city-owned facility “until they can be moved to a new location where they can be placed in proper context,” said Tyronne B. Walker, a city spokesman.
    The monuments were erected decades after the Civil War ended by people who wanted to demonstrate that the South should feel no guilt in having fought the war, the mayor’s statement said.
    “The removal of these statues sends a clear and unequivocal message to the people of New Orleans and the nation: New Orleans celebrates our diversity, inclusion and tolerance,” Mr. Landrieu said. “This is not about politics, blame or retaliation. This is not a naïve quest to solve all our problems at once. This is about showing the whole world that we as a city and as a people are able to acknowledge, understand, reconcile — and most importantly — choose a better future.”
    The debate over Confederate symbols has taken center stage since nine people were killed at a black church in South Carolina in June 2015. South Carolina removed the Confederate battle flag, which flew at its State House for more than 50 years, and other Southern cities have considered taking down monuments.
    Harcourt Fuller, an assistant professor of history at Georgia State University in Atlanta, and a scholar of national and regional symbolism, said in an email that supporters of the monuments see them as part of their “historical and cultural legacy that needs to be maintained and protected. “We’re talking largely about these concrete symbols,” he added. “By themselves, they’re lifeless. They’re not living symbols. But we as citizens project our own historical values onto them.”
    The Liberty Place monument, which was 35 to 40 feet tall, commemorated a violent uprising by white Democrats against the racial integration of the city’s police force and the Republicans who governed Louisiana. The White League won the battle and forcibly removed the governor, but federal troops arrived three days later to return the governor to power.
    The battle remained an important symbol to those who resisted Reconstruction, the period of transforming Confederate states after the Civil War. From 1932 until 1993, the monument bore a plaque that said, in part, that the “national election of November 1876 recognized white supremacy in the South and gave us our state,” the city statement said.
    In 1993, the City Council voted to remove the obelisk, but instead the plaque was covered with a new one that read: “In honor of those Americans on both sides who died in the Battle of Liberty Place” and called it “a conflict of the past that should teach us lessons for the future.”
    The opposition to the monuments’ removal — expressed in op-ed articles, social media posts and shouting at public meetings — was vigorous. A group opposing their removal said it had collected 31,000 signatures for a petition. Demonstrators gathered for a candlelight vigil on Monday as workers removed the Liberty Place monument.

    Robert Bonner, 63, who said he was a Civil War re-enactor, protested the monument’s removal. “I think it’s a terrible thing,” he told The A.P. “When you start removing the history of the city, you start losing money. You start losing where you came from and where you’ve been.”
    The removal happened on Confederate Memorial Day, which is formally observed by Alabama and Mississippi to commemorate those who died in the Civil War.

  • Sheriff Joe Benison meets with Hospital Board to discuss bingo funds

    Sheriff- Hostil

    L to R: GCHS Board members: Margaret Bir, Sheriff Benison, Lucy Spann, Elmore Patterson, Jasmine Smith, Pinnia Hines, Shirley Edwards and Rosemary Edwards. Not shown are Eddie Austin and John Zippert who also attended the meeting.

    Greene County Sheriff Jonathan “Joe” Benison, together with his executive assistant and bingo clerks, met with the Greene County Health System (GCHS) Board of Directors as part of their regular meeting on Tuesday, April 18, 2017. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss with the Board their concerns over the status of payments from electronic bingo parlors to the GCHS, which operates the hospital, nursing home, physicians clinic and home health services.
    On June 2, 2016, Sheriff Benison adopted a new rule for bingo which stipulated that the Greene County Hospital was to receive a fee of 4% of the amount paid to vendors, who provide bingo machines, to be paid to the hospital for providing health care services to the residents of Greene County.

    The Sheriff adopted this rule change as a way to share some of the revenues generated by electronic bingo, under Alabama Constitutional Amendment 743, with the Greene County Health Care System.
    Based upon estimates from the bingo clerks, Elmore Patterson, CEO of the Greene County Health System projected receiving $3,500 per month from each of the four operating bingo parlors as of June 2016. This would total $14,000 per month or $168,000 per year.

    The GCHS Board informed the Sheriff that since adoption of the rule in June 2016, the health facilities have not received these 4% fees from the vendors. The GCHS has received an average of $5,133 per month for the hospital and $ 1,104 per month for the residential care center (nursing home). These averages include a one-time payment of $30,000 from Greenetrack and smaller donations as a sub-charity from all of the bingo operation. The Anchor Group, the charity operating the River’s Edge Bingo facility is the only operation that has been paying the 4% vendors fee under the Sheriff’s rules.
    Sheriff Benison said that he understood the Greene County Health System’s concerns with the shortfall in the 4% vendors fee.
    He said that he wanted to discuss this with the bingo operators, including the Palace Bingo, a new electronic bingo hall at the Knoxville Exit on Interstate 20/59. He said that after he consults with the bingo operators that he and his clerks would report back to the GCHS Board of Directors.
    Elmore Patterson thanked the Sheriff for attending the meeting and said, “Health care is critical to Greene County. The GCHS is providing quality health care to residents of Greene County and surrounding areas. I just reported to the Board that we had an overall operating loss of $538,000 for the first six months of this fiscal year, which began October 1, 2016. This loss matches the half a million dollars of uncompensated care that the GCHS provided to Greene County citizens, during the same time period, with limited incomes who lack insurance or other health care payers. We are looking to electronic bingo, the county government and others sources to help us cover our deficit which basically comes from serving the people of our county who are poor and not covered by any health insurance.”
    All of the GCHS Board members also thanked the Sheriff for coming and listening to the concerns of the community. The members said they hoped to hear some positive response from the bingo establishments and the Sheriff in the coming weeks.

  • Remember the Chibok girls of Nigeria

    By Congresswoman Frederica S. Wilson (D-Fla.)
    chibokvigil_6906_fallen_web120

    Congresswoman Frederica S. Wilson (D-Fla) speaks at podium during a candlelight vigil for the missing Chibok schoolgirls in front of the State Department in Washington, D.C. on April 20, 2016. Wilson was joined by several members of Congress and some of the schoolgirls that escaped and have relocated to the Washington D.C., metro area. (Freddie Allen/AMG/NNPA Newswire)

    Three years ago, Boko Haram terrorists burst into dormitory rooms at the Government Secondary School in the northern Nigerian town of Chibok and kidnapped nearly 300 girls simply because they dared to get an education. In the days leading up to anniversary of their kidnapping, there were plenty of headlines devoted to the “Chibok girls,” as these now young women are famously known. On April 14, 2017, we reached another sad milestone. Some of us paused to remember the anniversary of this horrific, ongoing tragedy. Soon the news reports will fade and the story of the still missing Chibok girls will slip once more to the backburner.
    The 195 Chibok girls who haven’t been able to escape their captives or were not among the 21 released last October, are still the most compelling symbols of the Boko Haram insurgency, but we must never forget that the group has committed increasingly heinous acts in the past three years from which innumerable victims may never recover. Let me count the ways.
    More than 2.6 million people are currently displaced across Nigeria and its neighbor nations in the Lake Chad region, and Nigeria is in the process of building a comprehensive orphanage to house approximately 8,000 children who’ve been separated from their parents. At least one million children have been forced out of school. Millions more Africans are at risk of starving to death and countless men, women and children all of ages, both Christians and Muslims, have been kidnapped, tortured, and/or killed.
    It gets worse. In addition to engaging in the human trafficking of women, forcing them into sexual and domestic slavery, the insurgents also use children as suicide bombers. Even ISIS, to whom Boko Haram has pledged allegiance, has expressed concern that the group goes too far.
    As a mother, a former educator, and indeed, a human being, I have felt heartbroken, shocked and angered by the daily horrors our West African sisters and brothers have been forced to endure. The actions of the world’s most deadly terrorist group have also emboldened me to use my voice and every resource available in the fight to ensure that the Chibok girls are not forgotten and to help eradicate Boko Haram and repair the damage it has caused.
    I have traveled twice to Nigeria to meet with victims’ families and government officials and brought the #BringBackOurGirls movement to the United States. Each week that Congress is in session, lawmakers from both sides of the aisle participate in a “Wear Something Red Wednesday” social media campaign that helps maintain pressure on the Nigerian government to keep working to negotiate the release of the remaining Chibok girls and pull out all stops to defeat Boko Haram.
    On December 14, 2016, President Barack Obama signed, into law, legislation that Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine) and I sponsored that directs the U.S. secretaries of State and Defense to jointly develop a five-year strategy to aid the Nigerian government, the Multinational Joint Task Force created to combat Boko Haram, and international partners who’ve offered their support to counter the regional threat the terrorists pose.
    In a telephone conversation between President Donald J. Trump and Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari in February, the two leaders pledged “to continue close coordination and cooperation in the fight against terrorism in Nigeria,” according to a readout from the White House. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson also has reportedly praised the Multinational Joint Task Force’s efforts to defeat Boko Haram a “success story,” but while the terrorist group may be down, it is far from out.
    On June 12, we will mark another milestone in this terrible saga. That is the day the State and Defense departments’ five-year plan is due. It also is the deadline for the director of National Intelligence to assess the willingness and capability of Nigeria and its regional partners to implement the strategies outlined. We must use our collective voice to ensure they don’t miss this urgent deadline.
    By now you may be asking yourself why any of this should matter to African Americans who are fighting their own battles to close the economic and opportunity gaps that still exist here at home and to exercise fundamental rights like the right to vote. Some of you may have never even heard of the Chibok girls. But if we don’t, who will? If we don’t teach the world to acknowledge that Black lives matter across the globe, who will? Until then, it will continue to cry for victims of terrorism in European nations, the Middle East and even Russia, while African and African-American lives lost go ignored.
    Congresswoman Frederica S. Wilson is a member of the Congressional Black Caucus and represents parts of northern Miami-Dade and southeast Broward counties. She serves on the House Education and the Workforce Committee and the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. To learn more about Congresswoman Wilson’s work in Congress, please visit her Facebook and Twitter pages and congressional website.

  • France pays a ‘debt of blood’ to surviving African vets from World War II

    African WW II veterans
    African vets from World War II

    Apr. 17, 2017 (GIN) – Fifty years after over a million Africans fought and thousands died for France during the ferocious battles against Nazis in World War II, French President Francois Hollande has given citizenship and full pensions to African survivors of that war and other conflicts.

    In a ceremony at the Elysee Palace in Paris on April 18, the veterans – aged between 79 and 90 – received their new certificates of citizenship. Mr Hollande said France owed them “a debt of blood”.

    “France is proud to welcome you, just as you were proud to carry its flag, the flag of freedom,” the President told a group of 28 surviving vets.
    Human rights activists including the granddaughter of a Senegalese soldier, have long been calling for justice for the veterans. Aissatou Seck, who is herself deputy mayor of a Parisian suburb, has been a lead campaigner for African veterans’ rights.

    Last year, she started a petition that gained tens of thousands of signatures in less than a week. The veterans have long been struggling for recognition and equality in France. Until 2010, they received lower pensions than their French counterparts.

    African troops, mostly from Senegal, fought in the deserts of North Africa, the jungles of Burma, over the skies of Germany and against Italian Fascist troops who, backed by thousands of Eritrean colonial forces, invaded Ethiopia.

    During World War II, the Tirailleurs Senegalais (colonial infantry) comprised roughly 9 percent of the French army. Of the more than 200,000 black Africans recruited, approximately 25,000 were killed in battle.

    At the war’s end, former prisoners of war were repatriated and interned in the Thiaroye holding camp near Dakar, Senegal. Denied back pay and pensions equal to those of the white French vets, some 1,300 Senegalese fighters mutinied only to be met by gunfire by French soldiers on Nov. 30, 1944. Between 30 and 75 Africans died in what became known as the Thiaroye massacre. A military tribunal sentenced some of the survivors to 10 years in prison.

    One of those who fought for the French was Leopold Senghor, later President of Senegal. He spent two years as a Nazi prisoner of war and wrote of his experiences in his now-famous book of poetry “Hosties Noire”, Black Hosts, published in 1948.

  • America’s current civil rights climate the most dangerous in decades, activists, lawmakers say

    By Jane Kennedy

     

    conyersatpodium

    U. S. Rep. John Conyers surrounded by members of the Congressional Black Caucus. PHOTO: Courtesy/House.gov
    (TriceEdneyWire.com) – In a wide-ranging discussion on Capitol Hill among lawmakers, activists, policy experts and former Obama administration officials about the state of civil rights in the Trump administration, the consensus was unanimous that the current climate for civil rights is the most dangerous that has been experienced in decades.
    The April 6 event was hosted by Congressman John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI), ranking member of the House Committee on the Judiciary.
    “Although the Trump presidential campaign promised changes that would benefit minorities in the areas of crime, equal justice, and economic equality, his political allies and surrogates have sent a different message that has served to heighten national divisions and anxiety,” said Conyers, the longest-serving member in the House, known as “the dean” of the Congressional Black Caucus.
    The forum took place only a few days after U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that the Justice Department would review all of the consent decrees that the Obama administration entered into with law enforcement agencies that had demonstrated and documented histories of abuses and misconduct.
    “The misdeeds of individual bad actors should not impugn or undermine the legitimate and honorable work that law enforcement agencies perform in keeping American communities safe,” the DOJ memo stated. In February, Sessions, who admittedly was unfamiliar with the details of the reports that led to decrees with police departments in Ferguson and Chicago, for example, nonetheless described them as “pretty anecdotal.”
    Catherine Lhamon, chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and a former assistant secretary for civil rights at the Education Department under President Obama, described the first 76 days of the Trump administration’s civil rights record as “harrowing,” which she said was being “charitable.”
    Recalling the immense challenge of getting a consent decree to reform the Los Angeles Police Department in 2000, despite years of abuses that included beating a homeless woman, lying to judges, planting drugs on innocent people to secure convictions, racially based stops and assaulting citizens, she said that Sessions’ decision was a signal of the “low value” the new administration places on civil rights.
    “It was only through federal involvement that conditions [in LA] materially improved and that provided the impetus for real change for communities that were desperately in need of it,” Lhamon said. “The one ray of hope remaining now is that the federal courts have to approve the end of consent decrees that have already been implemented.”
    This week, U.S. District Judge James Bredar denied the Justice Department’s request to delay the implementation of a consent decree for the Baltimore Police Department.
    “The administration consistently uses its signaling to demonstrate disregard for civil rights. When it announces that it will reconsider the value of police consent decrees, withdraws support for transgender students, slashes the [budgets of agencies] that protect civil rights, the administration unilaterally sends a chilling message that it not only is not striving to secure civil rights for all but is in fact striving to not be a federal partner in that effort.”
    Roy Austin, former director of the White House Office of Urban Affairs, Justice, and Opportunity, delivered an equally pessimistic assessment. “In my humble opinion, the greatest current threat to civil rights in this great nation is this current administration. In record time [it] has already shown not simply a willingness to not defend civil rights, but it has shown an intent to violate civil rights, and at a minimum make it easier for others to violate civil rights. No marginalized, struggling, excluded, discriminated against, or protected individual or group is safe from what [it] has already done or appears to be planning to do,” Austin declared. “Everything that people have fought for, and that some have died for in recent decades, is at risk. Hopefully the will of the people, of representatives like you, and the courts will continue to ensure that the current administration cannot accomplish all that they desire.”
    According to Austin, the Trump administration “could not move fast enough” to remove guidance that literally helps to save the lives of transgender individuals. In addition, he had harsh words for the White House’s “Muslim ban,” which in his view not only endorses religious discrimination but also diminishes public safety.
    “When the federal government announces it will side with bigots and those with irrational fears, we all lose some of our humanity,” Austin said.
    He also criticized the “orchestrated photo-op” that President Trump had with the leaders of the nation’s black college and university presidents in February. While the White House may have celebrated it as a successful meeting, Austin cautioned, the students who depend on and thrive at these historic institutions, must not be fooled by the administration’s false promises.
    “Many of us in the Obama administration used to say that we wanted a nation where the color of your skin, the God you pray to, your ZIP code, or who you love did not determine your chances of success. It saddens me to see an administration that is trying to make these characteristics even more important and determinative,” Austin lamented.
    Following eight years of near radio silence when it came to criticism of the White House to avoid publically finding fault with its first African-American occupant, the Congressional Black Caucus has been quite vocal in calling out actions by the current administration that members consider unjust. After its meeting last month with President Trump, the group announced plans to also meet with key members of his administration to find common ground and at least attempt to smooth out differences.
    But given Session’s previous civil rights history during his time as a lawmaker and the record he is currently building at DOJ, the hope for common ground appears bleak. Said Texas Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, “We may be seeing the most dangerous Department of Justice that we have seen in decades.”