The Greene County Democrat

Category: Newswire

  • Ghana picks new leader who promises jobs, jobs, jobs

    akufo-addo

    New President of Ghana, Nana Akufo-Addo

    (TriceEdneyWire.com/GIN) – In a surprise upset for incumbent President John Dramani Mahama, voters turned out strongly for opposition candidate Nana Akufo-Addo, whose campaign for the presidency gave hope to thousands of jobless Ghanaians.

    Mr. Akufo-Addo earned 54% of the vote, while Mr Mahama took 44 percent. It was the first time in Ghana that an opposition candidate defeated an incumbent President at the ballot box.

    “There must be jobs in our country,” Mr. Akufo-Addo declared. “That means big investments in viable industries and boosting our agriculture productivity,” adding that he was also committed to delivering on a pledge, made five years ago, to ensure that all Ghanaians would have access to free secondary education.

    “The lack of jobs, which is the case under (the Mahama) government, poses a threat to the future stability of our country.”
    Ghana’s underemployment rate is 33 percent with 69 percent of the working population in low wage, insecure and informal jobs, according to the online news site Ghanaweb.

    According to the World Bank, some 48 percent of the youth between 15-24 years have no jobs. In a press interview, Mr. Akufo-Addo stressed that jobs for this sector would get top priority as rising youth unemployment was a “betrayal of future generations and would create problems down the road.” Unemployment is also higher among women, according to the Bank.

    Agriculture, the backbone of Ghana’s economy, recorded the lowest average growth rate at 3.9 per cent annually over a period of two decades from 1993 to 2013.

    The crisis in employment has been called “an unemployment time bomb” which has forced hundreds of high school graduates to leave the country for better work opportunities. In a move to build back industry, Mr. Akufo-Addo pledged to build one factory in each of Ghana’s 216 districts. He pledged to build a dam in every village to support agriculture.

    Along with jobs, the president-elect promised to attack corruption with the appointment of an independent prosecutor. Last year, Transparency International ranked Ghana as second most corrupt African country, after South Africa.

    The president-elect will be sworn in on Jan. 7 after a short transition period. Mr. Akufo-Addo comes from a prominent Ghanaian royal and political family. His father was a Chief Justice, President of Ghana (1970-1972) and member of the “Big Six” who, along with Kwame Nkrumah, spearheaded the transition from colony to independence.

    His maternal grandfather was Nana Sir Ofori Atta, King of Akyem Abuakwa, one of the largest and wealthiest kingdoms of the then Gold Coast Colony. The president-elect’s own political career spans more than four decades. Active in political movements in his early 30s, he criticized the military government of the time.

  • How a repeal of the Affordable Care Act will affect Blacks

    By Glenn Ellis, Health columnist

    acasigning President Barack Obama, Vice President Biden, members of Congress and guests before the signing of the ACA on March 23, 2010. PHOTO: The White House

    (TriceEdneyWire.com) – Racism has historically had a significant, negative impact on the health care of Blacks and other people of color in the United States. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is truly the first time that African-Americans have, collectively, had significant access to health care. It is noteworthy that America’s first African-American president is chiefly responsible for this access.

    Improved access to care; Medicaid expansion; prevention medicine; and lifting of barriers for pre-existing conditions, are all aspects of the ACA that have been of great benefit to Blacks. But there is a thick air of uncertainty on the horizon.

    In a few weeks, Donald John Trump will become the 45th president of the United States. It is unclear how quickly, or when, Trump’s vow to repeal and replace Obamacare will play out. But make no mistake, just like the adage, “when white folks catch a cold, black folks get pneumonia!”, a repeal of the ACA would disproportionately hurt blacks.

    Republicans in Congress have put out their plans: to repeal most of the ACA without replacing it; doubling the number of uninsured people – from roughly 29 million to 59 million – and leave the nation with an even higher uninsured rate than before the ACA.

    Let me point out a few ways that Blacks have, specifically, benefitted from the ACA, what many now call “Obamacare”. Given the low incomes of uninsured Blacks, nearly all (94 percent) are in the income range to qualify for the Medicaid expansion or premium tax credits. Nearly two thirds (62 percent) of uninsured Blacks have incomes at or below the Medicaid expansion limit, while an additional 31 percent are income-eligible for tax subsidies to help cover the cost of buying health insurance through the exchange marketplaces. Under the new law, insurance companies are banned from denying coverage because of a pre-existing condition, such as cancer and having been pregnant.

    Importantly, for people living with HIV there also new protections in the law that make access to health coverage more equitable including the expansion of Medicaid and in the private market, prohibition on rate setting tied to health status, elimination of preexisting condition exclusions, and an end to lifetime and annual caps. The passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in March 2010 provided new opportunities for expanding health care access, prevention, and treatment services for millions of people in the U.S., including many people with, or at risk for, HIV.

    Safety net hospitals play a critical role in the nation’s health care system by serving low-income, uninsured and medically and socially vulnerable patients regardless of their ability to pay. Also, in agreeing to lower payments, hospitals in the 31 states that expanded Medicaid under the law, have made up that revenue in part through the Medicaid expansion.

    These places are critical to the health of Black communities, and in the poorest neighborhoods. They have been among the loudest voices against repeal of the health law, as they could lose billions if the 20 million people lose the insurance they gained under the law. This could bring about widespread layoffs, cuts in outpatient care and services for the mentally ill, and even hospital closings.

    Under the ACA, these hospitals have received subsidies (or credits) to provide care based on a patients’ income levels. Should this change, community hospitals may have more difficulty weathering the storm of an increase in the number of uninsured.

    Admittedly, there are some real problems with the ACA as we have come to know it; not the least being steady increases in premiums (midrange plans increased 22 percent nationally in 2016, with the average premium set to rise 25 percent in 2017); nearly 70 percent of all ACA plan provider networks are narrower than promised; and the high-deductibles and co-pays. Perhaps the most universal complaint is the “individual mandate”, that requires everyone in the United States to have insurance, or face a financial penalty.

    Republicans are dead set on repealing the Affordable Care Act. Congress will likely pass significant modifications to the Affordable Care Act this month, which will be signed by incoming President Trump. The plans they have proposed so far would leave millions of people without insurance and make it harder for sicker, older Americans to access coverage. No version of a Republican plan would keep the Medicaid expansion as Obamacare envisions it.

    Donald Trump’s presidency absolutely puts the future of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in jeopardy. A full repeal is unlikely, but major changes through the budget reconciliation process (which cannot be filibustered) are nearly certain.

    But let me be clear; changes are needed in the ACA, but the idea of dismantling it remains a troubling prospect for Blacks.

  • The CBC places Blacks in power on Capitol Hill

    By Lauren Victoria Burke (NNPA Newswire Contributor)

    hillstaffers_7892_fallen_web120More than 75 percent of the members of the Congressional Black Caucus have Black Chiefs of Staff. This photo was taken during a recent CBC press conference outside of the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. (Freddie Allen/AMG/NNPA)

     

    In early December, the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies led by Spencer Overton, released a devastating report on staff diversity in the United States Senate.“African-Americans make up 13 percent of the U.S. population, but only 0.9 percent of top Senate staffers,” the report found.

    The Joint Center was careful to focus on senior staff positions in their Senate staff study. On January 5, the National Urban League will host a forum on Senate staff diversity on Capitol Hill. The only good news regarding the numbers on Black staff in the halls of power in Capitol Hill is on the House side.

    More than 75 percent of the members of the Congressional Black Caucus have Black Chiefs of Staff. Currently, 32 members of the CBC have a Black Chief of Staff. Additionally, the Senate’s only Black Republican, Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), currently employs the Senate’s only Black Chief of Staff.

    In July, Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan posted a photo on Instagram of over 70 Capitol Hill interns and not one was African American. Internships and fellowships on Capitol Hill are a key pipeline to building leadership experience in the halls of power.

    Speaker Ryan’s Instagram image was a jarring visual of what many have known on Capitol Hill for years: That the staffs and the pipelines to get to power and be positioned for decision-making roles remains overwhelmingly White. Ironically, Ryan will have a Black Chief of Staff, Jon Burks, starting this month.

    But when it comes to the number of senior staffers in Congress overall, particularly Chiefs of Staff, members of the CBC easily employ the majority. Though Black Chiefs of Staff are all but non-existent (1 percent) in the U.S. Senate, on the House side it’s a different story. Black Chiefs include Duron Marshall who is Rep. Brenda Lawrence’s (D-Mich.) Chief of Staff; Yelberton Watkins, who is Rep. Jim Clyburn’s (D-S.C.) longtime Chief of Staff; Michael Cooper who is Rep. John Lewis’ (D-Ga.) Chief of Staff and Veleter Mazyck, who is Rep. Marcia Fudge’s (D-Ohio) Chief of Staff.

    It matters who serves in the very top jobs: Those in senior staff positions have a major say in policy decisions and advise lawmakers directly. Chiefs of Staff and other senior staff members often move on to powerful well paying jobs in the private sector.

    On Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., just as in most places where there are budgets allocations to be decided on and jobs to fill, the person who makes the decision on those matters is the person with the most power and that often is not only the elected official, but also their Chief of Staff.             The Chief is also the gatekeeper for resumes and hiring staff. A typical Chief of Staff on Capitol Hill earns between $120,000 and $168,000.The conversation on hiring has been going on for years, but it was crystalized by the detailed report by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

    For many White Democrats in the Senate the numbers are particularly embarrassing. Several Senators, who have millions of African American constituents, have no Black senior staff members. The state with the most African Americans in the U.S. is Georgia with 3.1 African Americans according to the 2010 Census. Georgia is followed by New York (3 million), Florida (2.9 million), Texas (2.9 million), California (2.9 million), North Carolina (2 million), Illinois (1.8 million), Maryland (1.7 million), Virginia (1.5 million) and Louisiana (1.5 million).

    But not one Black senior staffer from any of those states now serves on the staffs of the U.S. Senators from the above states with the largest African American populations. None of them have a Black Chief of Staff, Legislative Director, Communications Director or State Director.

    On December 12, outgoing Congressional Black Caucus Chairman G.K. Butterfield released a statement on staff diversity. “The near complete absence of African American senior staff in personal and committee offices in the Senate is not reflective of the inclusiveness ideals of our government, and of our country. The CBC has long championed African American inclusion in all industries, and launched CBC TECH 2020 last year to promote diversity in the technology industry,” said Butterfield. “But the fact that the United States Congress, an institution that was created to represent all people, still has not taken meaningful steps to increase diversity is disappointing and requires an immediate remedy.”

    Butterfield continued: “There are plenty of offices hiring, on both sides of the aisle, and in both chambers, where Senators and Representatives can hire talented African American candidates. Yet, from our records, with the start of the next Congress, the Senate is poised to have one African American Senate Chief of Staff and no African American staff directors, if immediate action is not taken.”

    Lauren Victoria Burke is a political analyst who speaks on politics and African American leadership. Lauren is also a frequent contributor to the NNPA Newswire and BlackPressUSA.com. She can be contacted at LBurke007@gmail.com and on Twitter at @LVBurke.

     

  • More than 1,100 law school professors nationwide oppose Sessions’s nomination as U. S. Attorney General

    By Sari Horwitz , Washington Post

    A group of more than 1,100 law school professors from across the country is sending a letter to Congress on Tuesday urging the Senate to reject the nomination of Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) for attorney general.

    The letter, signed by professors from 170 law schools in 48 states, is also scheduled to run as a full-page newspaper ad aimed at members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will be holding confirmation hearings for Sessions on Jan. 10-11.

    “We are convinced that Jeff Sessions will not fairly enforce our nation’s laws and promote justice and equality in the United States,” states the letter, signed by prominent legal scholars including Laurence H. Tribe of Harvard Law School, Geoffrey R. Stone of the University of Chicago Law School, Pamela S. Karlan of Stanford Law School and Erwin Chemerinsky of the University of California at Irvine School of The professors — from every state except North Dakota and Alaska, which has no law school.

    The letter highlights the rejection of Sessions’s nomination to a federal judgeship more than 30 years ago. Robin Walker Sterling of the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, one of the organizers of the letter, said that 1,000 professors signed on within 72 hours. “Clearly, there are many, many law professors who are very uneasy with the prospect of Attorney General Sessions, and they are willing to take a public stand in opposition to his nomination,” she said.

    The law professors wrote that some of them have concerns about Sessions’s prosecution of three civil rights activists for voter fraud in Alabama in 1985, his support for building a wall along the nation’s southern border and his “repeated opposition to legislative efforts to promote the rights of women and members of the LGBTQ community.”

    ]

    “Nothing in Senator Sessions’ public life since 1986,” the letter states, “has convinced us that he is a different man than the 39-year-old attorney who was deemed too racially insensitive to be a federal district court judge.”

    Sessions’s former chief counsel William Smith, who is African American, has said that people who call Sessions racially insensitive are “just lying. And they should stop the smear campaign.”

    “The people making these allegations against Senator Sessions don’t know him,” Smith said in an interview. “In the last 30 years, they probably haven’t spent 10 hours with him. I spent 10 years working with him . . . as his top legal adviser. There are not statements that he made that are inappropriate.”

    Allegations of racial insensitivity were made against Sessions at a 1986 Senate hearing when he was nominated by President Ronald Reagan to be a federal judge. His nomination was defeated after being opposed by the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, People for the American Way and the NAACP, which is now protesting his nomination for attorney general, calling it “despicable and unacceptable.”

     

  • Police arrest NAACP protesters at Senator Jeff Sessions’ Mobile office

    By Prescotte Stokes III, AL.com

    protestors-sitting-in-sessions-officeProtestors sitting in Sessions office

                Six people including NAACP President and CEO Cornell William Brooks have been arrested during a sit-in staged at the Mobile office of Sen. Jeff Sessions. The group was protesting Sessions’ nomination by President-elect Donald Trump to be U. S. Attorney General.

    While there were about 30 protesters at the sit-in when it began around midday on Tuesday, many of them left before the arrests were made by the Mobile Police Department just before 7:00 p.m. The NAACP and other organizations held similar protests outside Senator Sessions offices in Birmingham, Montgomery, Huntsville and Dothan.

    The remaining members that were arrested were: Alabama State Conference President, Benard Simelton, Humanity in Action Fellow, Devon Crawford, the President of Mobile Chapter 5044, Lizzetta McConnell, National Director of the Youth and College Division of NAACP, Stephen Green and Joe Keffer.

    NAACP President Cornell William Brooks tweeted shortly before 6:30 p.m. that he believed he and others occupying the office were soon to be arrested.”The building manager has requested that we leave. And the police have just arrived. We are about to be arrested.”

    Earlier today, Brooks joined Alabama NAACP President Bernard Simelton to rebuke Sessions — President-elect Trump’s nominee for Attorney General. The national organization and the Mobile chapter said they would sit in Sessions’ office until he withdraws his attorney general nomination or they get arrested.

    “As a matter of conscience and conviction, we can neither be mute nor mumble our opposition to Sen. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions becoming attorney general of the United States,” Brooks said in a statement.  “Sen. Sessions has callously ignored the reality of voter suppression but zealously prosecuted innocent civil rights leaders on trumped up charges of voter fraud. As an opponent of the vote, he can’t be trusted to be the chief law enforcement officer for voting rights.”

    Shortly after the press conference held by the NAACP at Sen. Sessions Mobile office located at 41 West I-65 Service Road North, Sarah Isgur Flores, spokeswoman for Sen. Sessions released this statement.

    “Jeff Sessions has dedicated his career to upholding the rule of law, ensuring public safety and prosecuting government corruption.  Many African-American leaders who’ve known him for decades attest to this and have welcomed his nomination to be the next Attorney General.  These false portrayals of Senator Sessions will fail as tired, recycled, hyperbolic charges that have been thoroughly rebuked and discredited. From the Fraternal Order of Police and the National Sheriffs Association to civil rights leaders and African-American elected officials, to victims’ rights organizations, Senator Sessions has inspired confidence from people across the country that he will return the Department of Justice to an agency the American people can be proud of once again.”

    According to Mobile County jail records all six of the arrested members have been charged with second-degree criminal trespassing. McConnell, the President of Mobile Chapter of the NAACP has a court date set for her charge on January 30 at 8:00 a.m.

     

     

  • Statement by Alabama New South Coalition (ANSC) and the Save Ourselves Movement for Justice and Democracy (SOS) opposing the nomination of Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III as U.S. Attorney General

    Shown above : Albert Turner,  Albert Turner leading march across Edmund Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday in 1965; Turner is second row with Bob Mance behind Rev. Hosea Williams and John Lewis.. Albert Turner leading march across Edmund Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday in 1965; Turner is second row with Bob Mance behind Rev. Hosea Williams and John Lewis. Jeff Sessions, Albert Turner displays redistricting map of Perry County to his wife Evelyn and assosicaite Spencer Hogue, Jr. The Three were indicted, tried and found not guilty of 72 charges of voter fraud.,Alabama State Troopers give two minute warning to marchers on Bloody Sunday; Albert Turner is standing in second row with white cap.

    December 10, 2016

    The Board of Directors of the ANSC and the Steering Committee of SOS are issuing this joint statement in opposition to President-elect Donald J. Trump’s nomination of Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III to be the next Attorney General of the United States. We urge the United States Senate not to confirm the nomination of Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions to become Attorney General.
    We are compelled to issue this statement, because as citizens and residents of Alabama, we are intimately knowlegable and keenly aware of the harm that Senator Sessions has brought to our people and our state. We are issuing this statement as a warning to people in other states of the United States that Jeff Sessions is singularly unfit, manifestly unqualified and totally insensitive to serve as the chief law enforcement agent for our great nation.
    We are especially concerned that as Attorney General, he will be charged with enforcing civil rights, voting rights, and human rights laws, as well as being the primary caretaker of our criminal justice system. A criminal justice system and the policing mechanisms that support it are in urgent need of reform. By education, temperament and actions over the past 40 years, Jeff Sessions has shown himself to be unfit, unqualified and insensitive to serve in this critical position.
    Jefferson Beauregard Sessions (Jeff) III was born in Selma on December 24, 1946. He grew up and attended schools in Wilcox County, Alabama, before school integration. He attended Huntington College and University of Alabama law school, graduating in 1973. He was raised in one of the poorest counties in America, with an 80% Black majority population, during the time of “Jim Crow” and before the changes brought by the Civil Rights Movement. Nothing he has said or done in the 40 years of his professional life indicates any effort on his part to re-examine, reconsider or modify his cultural world view of “white supremacy” into which he was born, bred and operates, up to and including his current service in the United States Senate.
    We are especially concerned with his selective prosecution in 1985 of the “Perry County Three” – Albert Turner, Evelyn Turner and Spencer Hoage, for alleged voter fraud in connect with absentee ballots. Jeff Sessions was the U. S. Attorney in the Southern District of Alabama (Mobile). He indicted the three on 72 charges of voter fraud and mail fraud, since most of the absentee ballots were mailed in to the Circuit Clerk’s office.
    Albert Turner was an aide to Dr. Martin Luther King as State Director of the SCLC in Alabama. Turner also worked as the Manager of the Southwest Alabama Farmers Cooperative (SWAFCA). Turner can be seen in photos of Dr. Martin Luther King’s funeral, leading the mule train carrying the casket. Turner can also be prominently seen in the photographs of the Bloody Sunday 1965 Voting Rights March. He is in the second line of the march directly behind John Lewis. Turner helped to plan the March as a reaction to the murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson in Marion (Perry Co.) Alabama a few weeks prior. Turner worked in Perry County and throughout the Alabama Black Belt registering people to vote, doing voter education and GOTV work, including encouraging the homebound to vote absentee.
    Sessions prosecution of the trio was an act of voter suppression directed at reducing the turnout and involvement of Black voters in elections throughout the Black Belt. The selection of Turner, his wife, and Spencer Hoage, outspoken advocates for civil rights, voting rights and economic justice for poor and Black people, was not an accidental but a calculated act by Sessions to intimate voters in the Black Belt and the state of Alabama. Federal prosecutors in other Alabama jurisdictions following Sessions lead initiated other similar selective prosecutions of civil rights and community leaders in Greene, Hale, Pickens and surrounding counties.
    Ultimately, because of dedicated lawyers and community support, the Perry County Three were acquitted of all 72 charges that Sessions tried to bring against them.
    Later in 1986, President Reagan nominated Sessions for a seat on the Federal District Court for the Southern District of Alabama. At Sessions’ confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, four Department of Justice lawyers who had worked with Sessions testified that he made racially offensive remarks. One of those lawyers, J. Gerald Hebert, testified that Sessions had referred to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the American Civil Liberties Union(ACLU) as “un-American” and “Communist-inspired” (Sessions said he was referring to their support of the Sandinistas) and that these organizations did more harm than good by trying to force civil rights “down the throats of people.”
    Hebert, a civil rights lawyer, said that he did not consider Sessions a racist, and that Sessions “has a tendency sometimes to just say something, and I believe these comments were along that vein. Hebert also said that Sessions had called a white civil rights attorney “maybe” a “disgrace to his race.” Sessions said he did not recall making that remark and he did not believe it.
    Thomas Figures, a Black Assistant U.S. Attorney, testified that Sessions said he thought the Ku Klux Klan was “OK until I found out they smoked pot”. Sessions later said that the comment was not serious, but did apologize for it, saying that he considered the Klan to be “a force for hatred and bigotry.” Figures also testified that on one occasion, when the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, sent the office instructions to investigate a case that Sessions had tried to close, Figures and Sessions “had a very spirited discussion regarding how the case should then be handled; in the course of that argument, Mr. Sessions threw the file on a table, and remarked, ‘I wish I could decline on all of them,’” by which Figures said Sessions meant civil rights cases generally.
    Figures (who was the brother of the late State Senator Michael Figures, a founding member and officer of ANSC) also said that Sessions had called him “boy,” which Sessions denied. He also testified that “Mr. Sessions admonished me to ‘be careful what you say to white folks.” In 1992, Figures was charged with attempting to bribe a witness by offering a $50,000 to a convicted drug dealer who was to testify against his client. Figures claimed the charge was retaliation for his role in blocking the Sessions nomination. Sessions denied this, saying that he recused himself from the case. Figures was ultimately acquitted. We mention this to show that Sessions has a vindictive attitude to those who oppose his view of unbridled white supremacy.
    Albert Turner also traveled to Washington to testify in opposition to Sessions nomination to a Federal judgeship in Alabama because of his selective and unjust prosecution of voting rights activists.
    On June 5, 1986, the Committee voted 10–8 against recommending the nomination to the Senate floor, with Republican Senators Charles
    Mathias of Maryland and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania voting with the Democrats. It then split 9–9 on a vote to send Sessions’ nomination to the Senate floor with no recommendation, this time with Specter in support. A majority was required for the nomination to proceed. The pivotal votes against Sessions came from his home state’s Democratic Senator Howell Heflin of Alabama. Although Heflin had previously backed Sessions, he began to oppose Sessions after hearing testimony, concluding that there were “reasonable doubts” over Sessions’ ability to be “fair and impartial.” The nomination was withdrawn on July 31, 1986.
    Sessions became only the second nominee to the federal judiciary in 48 years whose nomination was killed by the Senate Judiciary Committee. He was quoted then as saying that the Senate on occasion had been insensitive to the rights and reputation of nominees.
    There are some who say in the thirty years since his work as a U. S. Attorney in Mobile that Jeff Sessions has mellowed and changed his views allowing him to be elected Attorney General of the State of Alabama and U. S. Senator. We do not think so and we list some of his recent actions during the past ten years in the U. S. Senate to show that he has not tempered and changed his deeply held white supremacist and white privileged views.
    Sessions supported the major legislative efforts of the George W. Bush administration, including the 2001 and 2003 tax cut packages, the Iraq War, and a proposed national amendment to ban same-sex marriage. He opposed the establishment of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the 2009 stimulus bill, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal Act. As the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, he opposed all three of President Barack Obama’s nominees for the Supreme Court.
    More specifically, during the second Obama term in office, Sessions:
    • Led opposition to a bipartisan effort in 2016 to ease sentencing guidelines for non-violent offenders;

    • Co-sponsored the Local Zoning Decisions Protection Act, which would prohibit the use of federal funds to implement, administer, or enforce HUD’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule;
    • Voted against the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor and called Justice Sotomayor unsuitable for the bench due to her past affiliation with a civil rights organization;
    • Voted against the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell;
    • Voted against the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act;
    • Voted against the Employment Non-Discrimination Act;
    • Voted against reauthorization of Violence Against Women Act;
    • Opposed President Obama’s 2012 Executive Action on immigration which granted deportation relief and work permits to thousands of undocumented immigrants (DACA); and
    • Described the Voting Rights Act as a ‘piece of intrusive legislation.’ in supporting the Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby v. Holder, which ruled Sections 4 and 5 of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional, which “gutted” the core enforcement of the VRA.
    We feel the nomination by President-elect Donald Trump of Jeff Sessions to be Attorney General of the United States is a dangerous step, which will undermine the role of the U.S. Justice Department as the leading force for enforcement of civil rights, voting rights, womens rights, immigrant rights and all laws promoting justice in our nation.
    We, as fellow citizens of Alabama, call upon the Senate Judiciary Committee and the U. S. Senate to once again reject the nomination of Jeff Sessions as unfit, disqualified by his own deeply held beliefs and insensitive to the needs and aspirations of all Americans for non-discrimination and simple justice in their lives.
    We urge everyone who feels that Jeff Sessions should not be confirmed to be Attorney General of the United States communicate your views and concerns to Congress, the press and your fellow citizens, as we have done.
    For more information contact:

    • Ms. Shelley Fearson, ANSC State Coordinator, Montgomery, Alabama
    Phone 334-262-0932
    • John Zippert, ANSC State President, 205/657-0273
    • Senator Hank Sanders, SOS Steering Committee, : 205/526-4531

  • The day that Rev. Jesse Jackson took Fidel Castro to church

     By Don Terry (NNPA Newswire Guest Contributor)

     castrojackson_2695_dterry_web120-1280x640

     Rev. Jesse Jackson at memorial service for Fidel Castro in Havana

    HAVANA — On the evening of December 1, six days after Fidel Castro’s death at age 90, Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Sr., stood in the pulpit of the packed First Presbyterian Church of Havana. Applause washed over him and moonlight danced on the warm waters of the nearby Caribbean.

    The international human and civil rights legend from Chicago was one of only two Americans invited by the Cuban Council of Churches to speak at an ecumenical memorial service that evening for the nation’s former president. The other American was Rev. Joan Brown Campbell, a longtime advocate for social justice and the first clergywoman to lead the National Council of Churches.

    Projected on the wall behind the pulpit as he spoke was a visual reminder of why Jackson is held in such high esteem by the country’s religious community: a black and white photograph, taken on June 28, 1984, of Jackson and Castro – the reverend and the revolutionary – at an event that continues to reverberate through Cuban society 32 years later, government officials and church leaders say.

    On that day, Jackson pulled off a near-miracle in a daring act of citizen diplomacy and liberation theology. He took Castro to church and in doing so helped open a door to the possibility of change and increased religious freedom across the island nation of 11 million souls.

    For the first time in 27 years Castro attended church. Although invited on many previous occasions over the years by Cuban and foreign church leaders, Castro always declined until Jackson persuaded Castro to accompany him to a Methodist church in Havana.

    “That visit was central to the new relationship between the state and the church,” Rev. Pablo Oden Marichal, an Episcopal priest and member of Cuban’s National Assembly, who was at the church that day in 1984, said during Jackson’s recent trip to Cuban. “From that circumstance a new relationship with the church and the government started. And Rev. Jesse Jackson was at the center of it.”

    While there remains much work to be done, that day was the beginning of a thaw in the icy — often repressive — relationship between the Cuban government and the country’s religious community. Cuba was officially an atheist state and “believers” like Rev. Marichal were barred from serving in the government. Slowly, that began to change after the two leaders walked into church together, joking and laughing when Jackson asked Castro, who was dressed in his green army fatigues, to take off his hat and remove his cigar before entering the sanctuary.

    “I want to remind you in these very brief remarks,” Castro told the crowded church that day, “of the very profound impression that the Rev. Jesse Jackson has made on all of us, because of his honesty, his talent, his sincerity, his honor, and the profound passion with which he fights for peace and friendship…And I consider him an extraordinary spokesman of the highest ideas of Christian thought.”

    It was Jackson’s first trip to Cuba; his first meeting with Castro. At the time, Jackson was running for President of the United States and arrived in Havana with a delegation of clergy and scholars, dozens of Secret Service agents and even more reporters and television news camera crews.

    Cuba was the third stop on Jackson’s four-nation fact-finding and peace-making tour of Central America. The drums of war were echoing through much of Latin America. Right-wing death squads were murdering peasants, priests and nuns. Cuba was in the crosshairs of the Reagan Administration, which accused the Castro government of exporting arms and rebellion from El Salvador to Southern Africa. Any talk of ending the crippling trade embargo against Cuba and normalizing relations was laughed at in Washington.

    At a news conference upon his arrival, Jackson said that he was “hopeful that our visit to the island will help break the cycle of misunderstanding and bring our people and our governments closer together so that we can begin to relate to each other as the neighbors that we are.”

    He had reason to be confident. A few months earlier, Jackson had pulled off his first near-miracle of the campaign season. No one believed he could do it, but he negotiated the release of an American Navy pilot, Lt. Robert Goodman, shot down over Syria and brought him home. Yet, Washington insiders told Jackson he was naïve and should not waste with his breath talking to Castro about setting captives free.

    The two men talked for eight hours. By the time they were finished, Castro had agreed to send home 22 Americans imprisoned in Cuba, mostly on drug charges. He also agreed to release and fly to Miami 26 Cubans, some of whom had been in prison for 20 years. The United States referred to the newly released Cubans as political prisoners. The Castro government called them terrorists and enemies of the state. Jackson simply called them free.

    Castro wanted something from Jackson during the trip. He asked Jackson to join him in speaking to 4,000 students at a local university. Jackson agreed. Then, as he told the congregation at the recent Havana memorial service, he asked Castro “point blank” why he did not go to church.

    Castro told Jackson that he grew up in the Catholic Church and loved it. He took to heart the teachings about defending the poor and weak. But when he came down out of the mountains after defeating dictator, Fulgencio Batista in 1959, he was shocked to find, Jackson said at the memorial service, “priests in the courtyards with guns, aiming at us, defending the graveyards of the rich.”

    Castro was bitterly disappointed and angry. He thought about burning the churches down. Instead, he turned his back and stayed away. “I reminded Fidel of minsters who preach and practice the theology of liberation,” Jackson said, “ministers and visionaries like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I told him, ‘That’s the church of your dreams, so don’t give up on the church.’”

    The next day, Castro accompanied Jackson to the Methodist church where an ecumenical group, including various Cuban clergy and a delegation of African American ministers from the National Council of Churches and the Black Theology Project, was holding a service and meeting to study and commemorate the work of Dr. King and liberation theology.

    “Nobody knew Fidel was coming,” said Dr. Benjamin Chavis, a longtime civil rights activist and former head of the NAACP, who is now president of National Newspaper Publishers Association. “It was an exciting moment. Everybody stood up and clapped. The Cuban people were overjoyed. They were glad to see their leader coming to church.”

    Chavis was there that day. He appears in the photograph of Jackson and Castro taken at the church. Chavis is standing next to Castro on the right, preparing to introduce the Cuban leader. “We all knew we were not only witnessing history, we were participating in history,” Chavis said. “I’ve thought about that day a lot since then. It was inspirational.”

    Five months later, Castro and religious leaders sat down for the first of what became a regular series of meetings of the government and the Council of Churches. The first meeting was supposed to last about an hour. It went on for six, Marichal, the Episcopal priest, said. The church leaders outlined “the many cases of discrimination” against “believers in the country.” Believers could not serve in the government. They could not build new churches. “We came to Fidel,” Marichal said, “to ask him to stop it.”

    It took six years of constant talk and work, but eventually, in the early 1990s, believers were allowed to serve in the government. In 1992, Cuba officially became a secular state. Six years later the Pope visited Cuba for the first time. “Religious freedom in Cuba is tolerated far more than people think,” an American official at the U.S. Embassy in Havana told Jackson on his recent trip to the island. Building new churches, however, remains difficult.

     

  • Bias hinders diversity in hiring for environmental organizations

    By Anthony Advincula

    Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from New America Media

    panel-on-diversity

     Panel of experts comments on report on diversity in environmental groups

    Diversity at the leadership level in the environmental sector remains low despite a high proportion of well-educated and qualified people of color in the United States, according to a report released last Thursday. The problem: systemic bias in the hiring process, but also environmental organizations’ unwillingness to mandate diversity when using a search firm.

    Diversity Derailed: Limited Demand, Effort and Results in Environmental C-Suite Searches, produced by Green 2.0, found that nearly 90 percent of search consultants – which are frequently used by mainstream environmental NGOs and foundations – have encountered bias on the part of the organizations using them during their search for senior-level positions.

    Search firms often hold the key to diverse hiring in executive positions – the question now is how organizations can use search firms effectively. According to Green 2.0’s report, most search firms allow their client organizations to take the lead in terms of whether or not they’re interested in mandating a diverse slate of applicants. If a client does not mention that diversity is a priority, less than half of search firms report mandating a diverse slate.

    Notably, only 28 percent of environmental NGOs and 44 percent of environmental foundations mandate that there must be some sort of diversity represented on their short lists for candidates. The result? People of color account for just 12 to 16 percent of the staff at mainstream environmental organizations. And there’s even less diversity in upper management, according to Green 2.0 executive director Whitney Tome.

    The methodology used in the study includes surveys and in-depth interviews of 85 executive managers, hiring directors, and search consultants in the environmental field.

    University of Connecticut associate professor of sociology Maya Beasley, who authored the study, says that while there has been an increasingly diverse constituency in the United States, there has been a limited effort to address why environmental organizations are still racially homogeneous.

    “This [study] is one of the few to examine the specific organizational practices that show workplace inequality, not only in the environmental sector but in any sector or industry,” she says. “And it is the first study that solely focuses on the efficacy of search firms on the practices that they employ to increase diversity.”

    Although nearly three-quarters of NGOs and foundations could identify benefits associated with diversity in an organization, most admitted to having trouble diversifying, particularly at senior levels. Their reasons include that their organizations “do not have a culture of inclusivity,” that there is always a “bad cultural fit for applicants of color unrelated to their qualifications,” or that the people of color that they do recruit are “not well known so members of the search committee may be reluctant to support their candidacy.”

    But even beyond culture, nearly half of NGOs and one-fourth of foundations “agreed that there are not enough qualified [people of color] applicants.”

    On this, many environmental advocates and academics do not agree. “I can attest to the growing qualifications of people of color. We have a large pool of highly educated candidates,” says Michelle DePass, dean of the New School’s Milano School of International Affairs and director of Tishman Environment and Design Center. “The environmental leadership has still been white; that should not be so in the 21st century.”

    According to Beasley, it may be a long journey to fully achieve diversity at the leadership level in every sector, but it should start with major players in each organization. “What I’d like to emphasize is that the solution is not to take the bias out of people – that doesn’t work,” said Beasley. “Instead, what we want to work on is minimizing the impact of bias in searches, and it will work with organizations thereafter.”

    The study came up with several recommendations to increase diversity in leadership hiring:

    • Mandate diverse slates of candidates.
    • Minimize bias in the hiring process by using a diverse search committee and diverse interviewers, and by structuring the interview process as much as possible.
    • Assess diversity on an ongoing basis throughout the process and share the information with others.

    “The nonprofit sector is the third largest workforce in the world, after retail and manufacturing,” said Patricia Hampton, vice president and managing partner of Washington, D.C.-based Nonprofit HR. “But, unfortunately, we [people of color in NGOs and foundations] often have the quietest voice.”

     

     

  • Voter suppression laws helped Trump take the White House

     

    By Barrington M. Salmon (NNPA Newswire Contributor)

    Shortly after the United Sates Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013, Republican state lawmakers began a calculated assault on the ballot box at the expense of Black and poor people across the nation; a coalition of civil and voting rights organizations fought back, primarily in the courts, against a wave of laws that restricted early voting, required photo IDs, limited pre-registration for 16- and 17 year-olds and closed polling centers.

    Now critics of those laws say that those measures may have tipped the November 8 presidential election in Donald Trump’s favor.

    Ari Berman, a political reporter and investigative journalist with “The Nation,” calls the GOP’s attack on voting rights the most under-reported story of 2016 and his reporting during the election campaign encapsulates the fallout from Republican lawmakers’ relentless and sustained voter suppression tactics on the election.

    “There were 25 debates during the presidential primaries and general election and not a single question about the attack on voting rights, even though this was the first presidential election in 50 years without the full protections of the Voting Rights Act,” he noted in a post-election story.             “Fourteen states had new voting restrictions in place for the first time in 2016 – including crucial swing states like Wisconsin and Virginia – yet we heard nary a peep about it on Election Day except from outlets like ‘The Nation.’ This was the biggest under-covered scandal of the 2016 campaign.”

    Berman continued: “We’ll likely never know how many people were kept from the polls by restrictions like voter-ID laws, cuts to early voting, and barriers to voter registration. But at the very least this should have been a question that many more people were looking into. For example, 27,000 votes currently separate Trump and Clinton in Wisconsin, where 300,000 registered voters, according to a federal court, lacked strict forms of voter ID. Voter turnout in Wisconsin was at its lowest levels in 20 years and decreased 13 percent in Milwaukee, where 70 percent of the state’s African-American population lives, according to Daniel Nichanian of the University of Chicago.”

    Rev. Dr. William Barber II has called his home state of North Carolina “ground zero for voter suppression.” “The court ruled on the most sweeping, retrogressive voter suppression bill that we have seen since the 19th century and since Jim Crow, and the worst in the nation since the Shelby decision,” said Barber, the president of the North Carolina state branch of the NAACP and also one of the lead plaintiffs in lawsuit against the state of North Carolina in a case that led to a federal court striking down the law. “The ruling in North Carolina was intentional discrimination of the highest order. They were retrogressing racially through redistricting. Over the past two election cycles, North Carolina has had an unconstitutionally constituted General Assembly. We should be appalled that anyone could rule that long.

    The macro question is that after Shelby, we’re in a different place in that there was no protection for civil rights. Shelby took us back across the Edmund Pettis Bridge. If preclearance was in place, they wouldn’t have passed these laws. They spent between $5 million – $6 million fighting us. To have the loss of the Voting Rights Act is an affront to the country.”

    Berman said North Carolina is a case study for how Republicans have institutionalized voter suppression at every level of government and made it the new normal within the GOP. He fears the same thing could soon happen in Washington when Trump assumes power.

    Going forward, Scott Simpson, the director of media and campaigns for the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said that civil rights groups have a daunting, but not impossible task before them.

    “The important thing to note about this election is that it started in June 2013,” he said. “For all the laws, statewide and locally, the vast majority, the wheels were set in motion well before Election Day.”

    Simpson was referring to the raft of voter suppression laws passed by Republican lawmakers in a number of states in the aftermath of the 2013 Supreme Court decision to invalidate a key section of the landmark Voting Rights Act; Wisconsin, Georgia, Texas, Kansas and North Carolina were among those states that passed laws that made it harder to vote.

    “It’s so clear that the loss of the Voting Rights Act had an impact on the election,” Simpson explained. “People were scared off, turned away from polling places, saw long lines and left without voting and with all the changes, some were left confused. It was a travesty. In North Carolina, you had a razor-thin election and in Wisconsin you had a very close election, because of the voter ID law.”

    Simpson continued: “You shave a couple of percentage points in an election, say one or two percent, and there will be an impact.” Simpson said the recent election was framed in rhetoric and racial hostility “and we now have the Department of Justice with a man in charge (Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III of Alabama) who opposes the Voting Rights Act.”

    Berman said that we can already glimpse how a Trump administration will undermine voting rights, based on the people he nominated to top positions, those he has advising him, and his own statements.

    Berman wrote: “[Trump’s] pick for attorney general, Jeff Sessions, wrongly prosecuted Black civil rights activists for voter fraud in Alabama in the 1980s, called the Voting Rights Act ‘a piece of intrusive legislation,’ and praised the Supreme Court’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act in 2013 saying that “if you go to Alabama, Georgia or North Carolina, people aren’t being denied the vote because of the color of their skin.”

  • Federation steps in to halt Wendy Hills foreclosure

    Minutes before the foreclosure sale on Thursday, December 15, 2016, the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, PLBA Housing Development Corporation and USDA Rural Development reached an agreement to sell the Wendy Hills Subdivision to the Federation. This averted the foreclosure sale, which was set for 11:00 AM at the Courthouse steps in Livingston, Alabama.
    “We are pleased that we were able to secure funding to purchase Wendy Hills and avoid a foreclosure which would have caused an untold upheaval to the forty families living there. We want to continue to provide good housing for very low income people in Sumter County, which was the original intent and goal of Wendy Hills,” said Cornelius Blanding, Federation Executive Director.
    Blanding continued, “ We know that we have to make some improvements to the property to bring it up to standards. We plan to secure financing for these improvements to the apartments as well as insure fire protection and safety for all of the residents.” “Our first step will be to insure the continued rental assistance, currently provided by HUD, to allow very low income persons to live in north Sumter County,” said Blanding.
    Commissioner Drusilla Jackson, whose district includes the Wendy Hills Subdivision, said “ I was very concerned about this foreclosure and its impact on people in my district. I pledge to assist the Federation in any way I can to help insure that the housing is maintained for the residents who live there.”
    The Wendy Hills Subdivision currently consists of 36 units, 10 one bedroom, 8 two bedroom, 8 three bedroom and 10 four bedroom apartments; an office and a playground area. Fire destroyed four of the original 40 units and they have not been rebuilt.
    Mayor Carrie Fulghum of the Town of Gainesville and General Manager of the PLBA Housing Development Corporation said “ I am glad, as mayor of the closest town, that we were able to prevent the foreclosure of Wendy Hills and I am dedicated to insuring a safe and secure place for the residents of the Subdivision.”
    For more information contact: Cornelius Blanding at 404/765-0991 or cornelius@federation.coop