Greene County Democrat

Category: Newswire

  • Obama commutes 348 prison sentences, the most of any President in recent history

     prison

    Prison Cells

    Written By NewsOne Staff

              Underscoring his calls for criminal justice reform, President Barack Obama on Friday commuted the prison sentences of 42 people who were locked up as non-violent drug offenders.

    The harsh prison terms were doled out under “outdated and unduly harsh sentencing laws,” the White House said in a statement. Most were “small-time drug dealers who received long sentences under a code shaped by the government’s war on drugs,” the report says:

    Some were serving life sentences. Held in various prisons across the country, they will be released between October 1, 2016 and June 3, 2018.

    Obama has now commuted sentences for 348 people, more than the total amount issued by the previous seven presidents combined.

    Obama has called for legislation to reduce sentences and provide alternative punishments for small-time offenders. “There remain thousands of men and women in federal prison serving sentences longer than necessary, often due to overly harsh mandatory minimum sentences,” the White House said.

    An estimated 2.2 million people are locked away behind bars in the United States, including “the mentally ill and drug addicts,” who are often people of color.

     

     

  • Ali’s stance on Vietnam War emboldened MLK to oppose conflict

    By George E. Curry Editor-in-Chief

    EmergeNewsOnline.com

     

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    Ali and King

    Muhammad Ali boxing

    Ali boxing on jump

     

    WASHINGTON – Muhammad Ali’s decision to risk going to jail by opposing the Vietnam War provided Dr. Martin Luther King with the strength to come out against the war publicly for the first time, according to the board chairman of King’s old organization.

    Bernard Lafayette, a longtime Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) field organizer and current board chairman, said in an interview with EmergeNewsOnline.com: “He was the reason Martin Luther King had the courage to come out and take a stand against the war, even though Martin Luther King’s own board was not in favor of it.”

    He added, “I don’t remember any exact quotes, but Muhammad Ali is the one that pushed Martin Luther King to take a stand.”

    Ali, who was a global icon in and out of the boxing ring, died June 3 in a hospital in Scottsdale, Ariz., where he had been admitted with respiratory problems. He was 74 years old. A private funeral service will be held Thursday in his hometown of Louisville, Ky. followed by a public memorial on Friday.

    On April 28, 1967, at the height of the Vietnam War, Muhammad Ali refused to be drafted into the U.S. Army, citing religious reasons. He said, “I ain’t got no quarrel with those Vietcong.” Ali, who had converted to Islam three years earlier and changed his name from Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr. to Muhammad Ali, was immediately stripped of his heavyweight championship title.

    He was convicted of draft evasion on June 20, 1967, sentenced to five years in prison, fined $10,000 and banned from boxing for three years. He remained free while his case worked its way through the appeals process.  On June 28, 1971, a unanimous Supreme Court overturned his conviction, granting him conscious objector status.

    Ali’s standoff with the federal government captured the attention of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the preeminent civil rights leader of that period.

    Like Ali, he took a stand against the Vietnam War, a position that was opposed by many of his fellow civil rights warriors, including NAACP Executive Director Roy Wilkins and National Urban League President Whitney Young, Jr. On April 30, 1967 – just two days after Ali refused to take a step forward to be inducted into the Army – King gave a major address against the war at Riverside Church in New York City.

    “I speak out against this war, not in anger, but with anxiety and sorrow in my heart, and, above all, with a passionate desire to see our beloved country stand as the moral example of the world,” King said. “I speak out against this war because I am disappointed with America. And there can be no great disappointment where there is not great love. I am disappointed with our failure to deal positively and forthrightly with the triple evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism. We are presently moving down a dead-end road that can lead to national disaster. America has strayed to the far country of racism and militarism.”

    While then-president Lyndon B. Johnson objected to King’s opposition to the war, the nation’s first African American president praised Ali for his unpopular stand. In a statement, President and Mrs. Obama said, “Muhammad Ali shook up the world. And the world is better for it. We are all better for it.”

    They explained, “He stood with King and Mandela; stood up when it was hard; spoke out when others wouldn’t. His fight outside the ring would cost him his title and his public standing. It would earn him enemies on the left and the right, make him reviled, and nearly send him to jail. But Ali stood his ground. And his victory helped us get used to the America we recognize today.”

    The former heavyweight champion occupied a special place in Black America. Like Joe Lewis had instilled mass pride in an earlier generation, he did the same for the succeeding generation.

    The Louisville, Ky. native won a gold medal at the 1960 Olympics in Rome and turned pro later that year. On Feb. 25, 1964, Ali scored an upset knockout over Sonny Liston in the sixth round, becoming heavyweight champion. In addition to predicting the round his opponent would fall, Ali provided the most colorful quotes of any boxer before or afterward.

    “The Louisville Lip,” as he was sometimes known, was famous for saying, “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee – his hands can’t hit what his eyes can’t see.”

    In case you didn’t get the point, he said, “I done something new for this fight. I wrestled with an alligator. I tussled with a whale. I handcuffed lightening. I thrown thunder in jail. Only last week I murdered a rock, injured a stone, hospitalized a brick. I’m, so mean I make medicine sick.”

    Not all of his lines were original, but that did not seem to matter. For example, he often said, “I’m so fast that last night I turned off the light switch in my hotel room and got into bed before the room was dark.” A variation of that quote is widely attributed to Negro League baseball great Josh Gibson describing Cool Papa Bell. But Ali could get away with claiming it.

    After being banned from boxing, Ali returned to the ring against Jerry Quarry in Atlanta on Oct. 26, 1970. Ali knocked him out in the third round.

    Many of Ali’s fights had catchy titles, most of them supplied by him. His 1971 fight against Joe Frazier was billed as the “Fight of the Century.” He defeated George Foreman in the “Rumble in the Jungle” in Kinshasa, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), knocking out Foreman in the eighth round. After splitting two bouts with Joe Frazier, Ali defeated him in 14 rounds in the “Thrilla in Manila.”

    Ali retired in 1981 with a 56-5 record and the only person to hold the heavyweight championship three times. In 1984, he was diagnosed with Parkinson disease.

    “Later, as his physical powers ebbed, he became an even more powerful force for peace and reconciliation around the world,” Obama said of Ali. “We saw a man who said he was so mean he’d make medicine sick reveal a soft spot, visiting children with illness and disability around the world, telling them they, too, could become the greatest. We watched a hero light a torch, and fight his greatest fight of all on the world stage once again; a battle against the disease that ravaged his body, but couldn’t take the spark from his eyes.”

    Jesse L. Jackson, founder and president of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, said of Ali, “He sacrificed the heart of his career and money and glory for his religious beliefs about a war he thought unnecessary and unjust…He was a champion in the ring, but, more than that, a hero beyond the ring. When champions win, people carry them off the field on their shoulders. When heroes win, people ride on their shoulders. We rode on Muhammad Ali’s shoulders.”

    Another civil rights leader, Marc H. Morial, president and CEO of the National Urban League, said: “I believe Muhammad Ali was the greatest athlete of the 20th century. Whether he was the greatest boxer in history may be debated for generations. But none has had a greater impact on American culture and social justice.”

    On Twitter, Rev. Al Sharpton, president and founder of the National Action Network, said Ali “was and always will be the greatest.” Sharpton said, “We should all strive to embody the virtues he possessed.”

    Even Ali’s former opponents had nothing but praise for him. “It’s like a part of me just passed w/him,” George Foreman Tweeted. “It’s hard for me to think about being n a world without Muhammad Ali being alive.”

     

  • Harvard grad delivers powerfully poetic speech on overcoming injustice

    Taryn Finley, Black Voices Associate Editor, The Huffington Post

     

    Donovan Livingston

    Donovan Livingston

     

     

    A recent Harvard graduate just gave a poetic speech that every student and teacher needs to hear.

    In his poem entitled “Lift Off,” Donovan Livingston stepped up to the mic at his Harvard Graduate School of Education convocation on Wednesday to speak about the trials and tribulations black people have endured, especially in the education system.

    He began with a nearly two-century-old quote from Horace Mann in which he called education “a great equalizer.” At the time, Mann said black people would be lynched for even attempting to read.

    “For generations we have known of knowledge’s infinite power,” Livingston continued. “Yet somehow, we’ve never questioned the keeper of the keys —the guardians of information.”

    Throughout his rousing poem, he spoke of the inequalities in the education system that has either held many black people back or used them as mere tokens.

    Livingston, who described his passion as going beyond any curriculum, also spoke about finding his light.

    “I am the strange fruit that grew too ripe for the poplar tree,” he declared. “I am a DREAM Act, dream deferred incarnate. I am a movement — an amalgam of memories America would care to forget my past, alone won’t allow me to sit still. So my body, like the mind, cannot be contained.”

    Livingston went on to implore that his fellow graduates — and professors — help free their students rather than to speak “over the rustling of our chains.” He used his seventh grade teacher, who helped him find his voice, as an example. The graduate said he sees “the same twinkle that guided Harriet to freedom” in his students’ eyes. He then urged educators to look beyond their students’ mischief and to instead help them realize their potential:

    “Education is no equalizer —
    Rather, it is the sleep that precedes the American Dream.
    So wake up — wake up! Lift your voices
    Until you’ve patched every hole in a child’s broken sky.
    Wake up every child so they know of their celestial potential.
    I’ve been a black hole in the classroom for far too long;
    Absorbing everything, without allowing my light escape.
    But those days are done. I belong among the stars.
    And so do you. And so do they.
    Together, we can inspire galaxies of greatness
    For generations to come.
    No, sky is not the limit. It is only the beginning.
    Lift off.”

    Livingston, who will be attending the University of North Carolina in the fall for his Ph.D., tweeted the day after he gave his speech  how important it was for him to overcome the roadblocks on his journey to Harvard and share his message.

  • Congressional art contest winner depicts police brutality and protests

    By Lauren Victoria Burke (NNPA News Wire Contributor)

    CBC art competition winnerCBC art contest winner

                Cardinal Ritter College Prep High School Senior David Pulphus won this year’s congressional art competition with a painting called “Untitled #1.” The first place winner is from Congressman Lacy Clay’s district (D-Mo.)

    Congressional art competition entitled, “An Artistic Discovery,” features a nationwide art contest coordinated by members of the U.S. House of Representatives. The contest recognizes the talents of high school students across America. Over 200 Members of Congress and over 50,000 high schools students have taken part in the popular and competitive program.

    Each year, members of Congress put out a call for students to compete in the contest and the resulting work is displayed on the white walls of a long tunnel that connects House Office Buildings to the U.S. Capitol. The work is seen by members of Congress, staffers, lobbyists and the thousands of visitors to the U.S. Capitol complex each year.

    Inadvertently, the annual art contest has become a reflection of what’s on the minds of young people in America.

    Pulphus’ work is an acrylic painting featuring a downtown street scene with the St. Louis’ iconic arch displayed in the background and three police officers with animal heads, two with guns in hand, and a large group of marchers approaching moving toward the police. The lead marcher carries a sign that says the word “history.” Pulphus’ painting includes several signs, one of which says “Racism Kills,” and another reading “Stop Killing.” On the right you can see man being crucified wearing a graduation cap holding the scales of justice in his hands.

    Pulphus,’ “visually stunning acrylic painting on canvas entitled, “Untitled #1” will be displayed at the U.S. Capitol Complex. Pulphus will travel to Washington, DC, courtesy of Southwest Airlines, to unveil his winning entry. The painting portrays a colorful landscape of symbolic characters representing social injustice, the tragic events in Ferguson, Missouri and the lingering elements of inequality in modern American society,” read a May 6, release from Rep. Clay’s office.

    Rep. Clay represents greater St. Louis and Ferguson, Mo., where in August 2014, Black teenager Michael Brown, Jr., was shot and killed by Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson.

    During an interview with the NNPA News Wire, Rep. Clay was asked about Pulphus’ work. The Congressman will greet the artist in Washington, D.C. and be present with Pulphus,’ when the painting is presented for display in the U.S. Capitol complex.

    “I think that the art work selected for this year — winner of the Congressional art competition has to be the most creative expression that I’ve witnessed over the last 16 years,” Rep. Clay said between votes on the House floor.” I’m very proud of the young man who is the artist responsible for this work he depicts the St. Louis community in the way he envisions it. I respect that and I’m so glad that the judges picked his work number one as the winner.”

    Pulphus’ work will travel to Washington, D.C. in a few weeks where he will attend a reception for all of the winners around the country. This year’s first place winner will receive a scholarship, according to Rep. Clay’s office.

    The contest is in its 32nd year and this is the 16th year that Congressman Clay has conducted the competition in Missouri’s first Congressional District. Terri Sewell, 7th District Alabama Congresswoman also conducts the art competition in her district which includes Greene and many counties in the Alabama Black Belt.

     

  • Jimmy Carter, seeing resurgence of racism in Trump campaign , plans Baptist Conference for Unity

    By LAURIE GOODSTEIN, New York Times

     Jimmy Carter

    Former President Jimmy Carter, who has long put religion and racial reconciliation at the center of his life, is on a mission to heal a racial divide among Baptists and help the country soothe rifts that he believes are getting worse.

    In an interview on Monday, Mr. Carter spoke of a resurgence of open racism, saying, “I don’t feel good, except for one thing: I think the country has been reawakened the last two or three years to the fact that we haven’t resolved the race issue adequately.”

    He said that Republican animosity toward President Obama had “a heavy racial overtone” and that Donald J. Trump’s surprisingly successful campaign for president had “tapped a waiting reservoir there of inherent racism.”

    Mr. Carter conducted telephone interviews to call attention to a summit meeting he plans to hold in Atlanta this fall to bring together white, black, Hispanic and Asian Baptists to work on issues of race and social inequality. Mr. Carter began the effort, called the New Baptist Covenant, in 2007, but it has taken root in only a few cities. The initiative is expanding to enlist Baptist congregations across the country to unite across racial lines.

    Mr. Carter, 91, began treatment last year for cancer that had started in his liver and spread to his brain. He announced in December that doctors had found him free of cancer but that he was still receiving treatments for metastatic melanoma. On Monday, he said he was feeling well.

    Mr. Carter, a Democrat who was the 39th president, grew up on a farm in Plains, Ga., where many of his friends were the black children of neighboring farmhands. He was raised a Southern Baptist and was the first United States president to call himself a born-again Christian, bringing national attention to the evangelical movement.

    Mr. Carter said the election of Mr. Obama was a hopeful sign, but he added, “I think there’s a heavy reaction among some of the racially conscious Republicans against an African-American being president.”

    He said recent reports showing high unemployment and incarceration rates among black people, “combined with the white police attacks on innocent blacks,” had “reawakened” the country to the realization that racism was not resolved in the 1960s and ’70s.

    He said Mr. Trump had violated “basic human rights” when he referred to Mexican immigrants as criminals and called for a ban on Muslims’ entering the country.

    “When you single out any particular group of people for secondary citizenship status, that’s a violation of basic human rights,” said Mr. Carter, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his work with the Carter Center in promoting human rights and democracy in many countries.

    Asked why polls showed high support among evangelical Christians for Mr. Trump’s candidacy, Mr. Carter said: “The use of the word evangelical is a misnomer. I consider myself an evangelical as well. And obviously, what most of the news reporters thought were evangelicals are conservative Republicans.”

    “They have a heavy orientation to right-wing political philosophy, and he obviously is a proponent of that concept,” Mr. Carter said, referring to Mr. Trump.

    He pointed out that the evangelicals in the Southern Baptist Convention had aligned themselves with the Republican Party and organized the Moral Majority, a conservative Christian political group, only in the late 1970s, while he was president. Mr. Carter announced that he was leaving the Southern Baptist Convention in 2000, after the denomination solidified its turn to the right and declared that it would not accept women as pastors.

    Mr. Carter founded the New Baptist Covenant by reaching out to black and white Baptist associations, many of which had split many years ago over slavery. Nearly 15,000 people from 30 Baptist associations attended the founding meeting in 2008.

    Hannah McMahan, the executive director of the New Baptist Covenant, said the group had been in a “pilot phase” for the last two years. She said black and white churches had formed partnerships, called covenants, in Dallas; Macon, Ga.; St. Louis; Birmingham, Ala.; and Atlanta. But the process is painstaking, Ms. McMahan said, adding, “What this has given me an appreciation for is how deep the divides are, and that this kind of work will not happen overnight.”

    The work is especially challenging in this climate, said the Rev. Raphael G. Warnock, the senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, the church where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was once a pastor. Ebenezer Baptist is participating in the New Baptist Covenant.

    “This is a dark moment in our national conversation,” Pastor Warnock said. “Those of us who understand that we are better together had better raise our voices, because there are others who are trafficking in theater, in paranoia, and they ply the trade of fear as part of their political craft.”

    However, he said, “I’m much more fired up than discouraged, because the ugliness of the rhetoric we’re seeing in this election cycle really just brings into sharp focus the ugly underbelly of bigotry that has always been there.”

     

     

  • The Obama family will live in a 9 bedroom, $5.3 million D.C. mansion after presidency ends

    BY LINDSAY KIMBLE           obama's house in Washington, D. C.-800.jpg

    Home Obama family will lease in Washington, D. C. 

    The Obama family will be served a White House eviction notice come January, but luckily, they’ve already found new digs to lay down roots.

    President Barack Obama, wife Michelle Obama and daughters Malia and Sasha, will lease the Kalorama, D.C., mansion of Joe Lockhart and Giovanna Gray, according to Politico. The home, which is 8,200 square feet, was built in 1928 and has nine bedrooms, in addition to eight and a half baths.
    White House officials, contacted by PEOPLE, had no immediate comment on the story.

    According to public record, Lockhart bought the mansion in 2014 for $5,295,000. Lockhart, the former White House Press Secretary for President Bill Clinton and current EVP of communications for the NFL, and wife Gray, a Glamour editor, have relocated to Manhattan, Politico reported.
    The president announced his plans to stay in D.C. after his term ends earlier this year. The family will stay at least until daughter Sasha, who is a sophomore, finishes high school, Obama said.

    Before moving into the White House in 2009, the family lived in Chicago, where Obama was an Illinois state senator and where the family still owns a home.

     

     

  • What difference will Obama’s plan to bring power to Africa make?

    By: BBC Africa News

    Obama at solar expo

    President Obama talks with African solar AFP

    In February US President Barack Obama signed an agreement to bring electricity to 50 million people in sub-Saharan Africa by 2020. Neil Ford asks, even if this is possible, how many will still be left in the dark?
    Perhaps the most remarkable things about the Electrify Africa Act of 2015 are that it commits the US to increased foreign aid at a time of economic uncertainty and cuts through sharp political divisions.The Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Ed Royce, worked with Democrat Eliot Engel for two years to drive the bill through Congress.
    The act commits the US government to supporting President Obama’s Power Africa initiative. Although headlined as a $50bn scheme, the US authorities will contribute just $7bn.
    Other governments, development agencies and private sector companies are expected to provide the remainder in public-private partnerships.This will be difficult to achieve during a global economic downturn.
    Even if it succeeds in its aim of bringing electricity to 50 million Africans by 2020, more than 10 times that number will still be without power.
    So the Power Africa initiative is not a magic bullet, but it has at least highlighted Africa’s power supply problems.
    It is easy to take electricity for granted. Most African homes lack fridges and electric cookers but even a single electric light bulb can bring security and allow children to do their homework after dark.
    Mobile phones encourage economic growth but the lack of electricity makes recharging them yet another hurdle to be cleared.
    According to the latest World Bank data, 35% of sub-Saharan Africans have no access to electricity.
    This is a far lower figure than in any other region.
    The next lowest rate is 22% for South Asia, while all five North African countries claim 100% coverage.
    Most Africans use wood and kerosene for fuel, causing deforestation and thousands of fatal accidents every year.
    The 35% figure masks huge variations, with electrification rates ranging from 5% in South Sudan up to 100% in Mauritius.
    Connection rates in rural areas are typically worse than 10%. Most of those with electricity at home live in cities, supplied by grids that were developed in colonial times but which have failed to expand with urban growth.
    Even many of those connected to the grid suffer from unreliable supplies. So those who can afford them, buy their own expensive diesel fired generators.
    While South Africa relies on coal-fired plants, most African countries depend on large hydro schemes to generate electricity.
    Yet unreliable rainfall means that hydroelectric production varies even during a good year and is even worse – as at present – during an El Nino event.
    The main problem is a lack of revenue. Most consumers are unable to afford to pay a commercial rate for electricity.
    This prevents power utilities from earning enough money to pay for new generation, transmission and distribution infrastructure; generation capacity to produce electricity; transmission to move it across big distances; and distribution to get it into people’s homes and businesses.
    Either people need to become richer, or power needs to be cheaper.
    Luckily, a solution may be at hand. The price of photovoltaic (PV) solar power panels is falling, while solar cells are becoming more efficient, so PV is becoming a cost-effective option. Such off-grid solutions avoid the need for expensive transmission and distribution infrastructure.
    Power Africa is already supporting very small-scale solar PV. It has awarded part-funding to 28 off-grid projects, along with the technical support that small-scale developers often lack. Many more will now follow suit.
    Most of these projects involve solar PV or biomass, which involves using agricultural waste as a power generation feedstock.
    Power Africa describes the first kWh people gain access to as the “the most valuable” because it provides at least a single source of electric light and the ability to charge mobile phones and radios.
    With its commitment to providing “cleaner power generation”, many of the on-grid ventures backed by Power Africa also involve renewable energy.
    In some cases, it is directly funding generation projects, such as the 152 MW Sarreole wind farm in Senegal. More often, it will supply technical support and dedicated advisors.
    It has already helped Ghana to tap its newly discovered gas reserves for thermal power production by providing regulatory advice.
    New projects will be identified as more of the funding is made available.
    It may be that a single grand scheme cannot solve Africa’s power problems but Power Africa can help provide local solutions, one at a time.

  • Black students ejected from Trump rally in GA.

    Jennifer Jacobs, The Des Moines Register

    Students at Valdosta

    VPC Police officers outside Donald Trump’s rally Monday evening at Valdosta State

    About 30 Black students were escorted out of a Donald Trump rally in Valdosta, Georgia. Hear some of the students tearfully describe what happened. 

     

    VALDOSTA, GA. — There are different accounts of who made the decision to eject approximately 30 Black students who say they were standing silently at the top of the bleachers at Donald Trump’s rally here Monday evening.
    Late Monday night, a Trump spokeswoman denied that the incident at Valdosta State University’s campus was initiated “at the request of the candidate” or the presidential campaign. A spokesman for the Secret Service contradicted the students’ statements that federal agents led them out of the building, saying Trump staff and local law enforcement officials were in charge of handling protesters.However, Valdosta Police Chief Brian Childress tried to clear up the confusion Tuesday morning, telling USA TODAY that he personally went to speak to the Trump campaign staff and the local law enforcement officers helping with security to confirm who ordered the students out, and to ask why.
    “These folks were told to leave the PE complex by the Trump detail,” Childress said.
    The police chief said he thinks the Trump staff made the right call — and it wasn’t a racial issue.
    Trump had rented the venue, so “he had the right to tell folks he didn’t want to be there, that they had to leave. I’m not campaigning for anyone. That’s not what I do. But in this case, I support them,” Childress said.
    The sight of the students, who were visibly upset, being asked to leave the grounds created a stir at a university that was a whites-only campus until 1963.
    The young people said they had planned to sit in silent protest, but were escorted out by security officials before the presidential candidate began speaking. The incident was recorded on video by several attendees.
    “We didn’t plan to do anything,” said a tearful Tahjila Davis, a 19-year-old mass media major, who was in the group of Valdosta State University students, many of whom were wearing all black, that was removed. “They said, ‘This is Trump’s property; it’s a private event.’ But I paid my tuition to be here.”
    Brooke Gladney, a 22-year-old marketing and business management major, said: “The only reason we were given was that Mr. Trump did not want us there.”
    After this story was published Monday evening, Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks said in an email: “There is no truth to this whatsoever.” She said “the campaign had no knowledge of this incident.”
    Trump has been regularly heckled by protesters at his campaign rallies, but tensions have increased after he came under fire on Sunday for not immediately condemning support from a prominent white supremacist.
    Earlier Monday, some black students at another Trump campaign rally, on the campus of Radford University in Virginia, were led out by security officers after they began chanting: “No more hate! No more hate! Let’s be equal, let’s be great!”
    Trump’s two campus rallies took place just one day before high-stakes Super Tuesday, when 11 states hold GOP contests, including a collection of southern states. Trump is poised to lock down enough delegates to give him a sizable — and possibly insurmountable — lead over his GOP rivals.
    Robert Hobak, a spokesman for the Secret Service, said agents were reportedly in the area where the Valdosta students were standing inside the venue, but they would have been simply monitoring. Escorting protesters out of rallies is “not our function,” he said. It’s up to the host committee, campaign staff and local law enforcement to handle, he said.
    “This happens sometimes that people will confuse us with other law enforcement,” Hobak said Tuesday morning.
    Several other Valdosta students scattered in smaller groups throughout the audience inside the rally said before Trump’s speech that they intended to sit in silent protest, without causing any disruption. They followed through on that. Only one person, who was white, was ejected for protesting during Trump’s remarks.
    Among the group of 30 to 40 asked to leave, at least one was white, and several of them committed violations that could have led to their arrest if police hadn’t shown restraint, Childress said.
    “What I resent is now some of these folks are going around saying it was a black issue. That’s total nonsense,” he said. “I personally asked why were these folks told to leave and the reason was: they were being disruptive. The Trump staff said they were using profanity. The F-bomb is one word that was used. You can’t be in there using profanity. That violates Georgia law.”
    Some of the students could have been arrested for disorderly conduct or for criminal trespass for arguing with the Trump detail when they were asked to leave, Childress said.
    Once the students were outside, a combination of local law enforcement officials, including Valdosta police, took over, he said.
    Some of the young people who’d been ejected “tried to jump back in line and cut in front of folks who were waiting – and that was a very long line – and that made some of the folks in line upset. At that point, we were told they needed to leave the complex,” the police chief said.
    There were roughly 7,000 spectators inside the venue and about 3,000 more outside, he said.
    “We didn’t have a single arrest. I think that shows great restraint,” Childress said.