The Greene County Democrat

Category: Newswire

  • Gov. Robert Bentley signs bill to block city minimum wages, voiding Birmingham ordinance

    Written with assistance from AL.Com

    A bill to block Alabama cities from setting their own minimum wages is now law. Gov. Robert Bentley signed the bill,
    Thursday, February 25, soon after the Alabama Senate passed the bill by 23-11.
    The Birmingham City Council voted Tuesday to raise the minimum to $10.10 an hour, moving the effective date up from an ordinance passed earlier.
    The bill’s passage voids the ordinance passed in Birmingham, according to the city’s legal department. “It certainly is unfortunate and, if it stands up, it is a loss for those who deserve to earn a livable wage in the city of Birmingham and, for that matter, the state of Alabama,” Council President Johnathan Austin said. “But the state obviously disagrees.”
    Birmingham officials have not yet said what, if any, recourse the city has. “We will continue to work together to stand and fight for our citizens,” Austin said.
    The Legislature has the authority to preempt local ordinances, even those that are already in effect, said Mike Lewis, spokesman for Attorney General Luther Strange. Lewis was not commenting specifically on the minimum wage bill.
    The Republican super majorities in the House and Senate put the bill on the fast-track as the Birmingham City Council raced to enact its minimum wage. Other cities in Alabama including Tuscaloosa, Huntsville and Mobile were considering following Birmingham in raising the minimum wage in their areas.
    Rep. David Faulkner, R-Mountain Brook, sponsor of the legislation, said the state needs to maintain a uniform minimum and that Birmingham businesses were not given adequate notice for the change.
    The Senate passed the bill after Democratic senators spoke in opposition to the measure for about three and a half hours.  The Senate voted 22-11 to cut off debate before passing the bill Thursday afternoon.
    The governor’s office sent out an email saying that the governor had signed the bill less than an hour after it passed.
    The vote was mostly along party lines, but not entirely.
    Republican Sens. Paul Bussman of Cullman and Bill Holtzclaw of Madison are listed as no votes on the Legislature’s website.
    All eight Democratic senators voted against the bill. They condemned it as an effort to encroach on local authority and a move that would hurt workers struggling to make ends meet.
    “When you lift a person on the bottom, everybody above them is lifted up,” Sen. Rodger Smitherman, D-Birmingham said.
    Alabama does not have its own minimum wage, so employers follow the federal minimum of $7.25 an hour, last raised in 2009.
    Senator Hank Sanders devotes his “Senate Sketches” column this week (see page 6) to explaining his position in support of raising the minimum wage and against the legislation passed by the Republican majority.
    “Everything has gone up,” Sen. Linda Coleman-Madison said. “Yet we don’t feel that the working poor deserves a break.” Coleman-Madison has proposed a constitutional amendment that would raise the minimum statewide to $10 by 2018.
    Republican lawmakers supporting the anti-minimum wage bill said it would force employers to eliminate jobs, reduce hours or raise costs on customers to absorb the increased labor costs.
    “I can promise you employment will go downhill,” said Sen. Jabo Waggoner, R-Vestavia Hills, who carried the bill in the Senate.
    Austin said he appreciates the support the city council’s efforts have received from many members of the Jefferson County legislative delegation in both the House and Senate.
    Joe Keffer, who has advocated for higher minimum wages as part of Raise Up Alabama and the SOS Coalition for Justice and Democracy, disputed assertions that raising the minimum eliminates jobs.
    Keffer said workers who benefit from a minimum wage increase, spend the extra money within the community, boosting local economies.
    Keffer said it’s wrong for lawmakers to stand in the way of higher minimum wages in Birmingham and other cities because of the state’s high levels of poverty. “What they’re saying is we think business interests are more important than interests of people in these cities,” Keffer said.
    Ken Smith, executive director of the Alabama League of Municipalities, said the league did not take a position on the legislation. Smith said that league members were on both sides of the issue.
    The bill also prohibits counties from enacting minimum wages, but counties already lacked that authority, said Sonny Brasfield, executive director of the Association of County Commissions of Alabama.

  • Black women become most educated group in US

    By: Simon Osborne

    black-women

    Black woman college graduate

    Black women are now the most educated group in US, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

    Between 2009 and 2010, black women earned 68 per cent of associate’s degrees, 66 per cent of bachelor’s degrees, 71 per cent of master’s degrees and 65 per cent of all doctorate degrees awarded to black students.

    The percentage of black students attending college has increased from 10 per cent to 15 per cent from 1976 to 2012, while the percentage of white students fell from 84 to 60 per cent.

    By both race and gender, a higher percentage of black women (9.7 per cent) is enrolled in college than any other group, including Asian women (8.7 per cent), white women (7.1 per cent) and white men (6.1 per cent).

    However, a recent study found black women make up just 8 per cent of private sector jobs and 1.5 per cent of leadership roles.

    When it comes to the public sector, a quarter of state legislators are women, but less than a quarter of those are women of colour.

    Catalyst found in 2014 that Asian, black, and Hispanic women make up 17 per cent of workers in S&P 500 companies, but fewer than four per cent of executive officials and managers.

    The same groups also make up fewer than three per cent of Fortune 500 company board directors.

  • National, State and Local policy makers headed for Black Political Convention in Gary

    By Hazel Trice Edney 

     

    Mayor Johnny Ford of Tuskegee and Mayor of Gary Indiana,

    Karen Freeman-Wilson

     

     

    (TriceEdneyWire.com) – As the U. S. presidential candidates prepare for national conventions and congressional campaigns remain in full throttle, the National Policy Alliance, a coalition of 16,000 Black elected and appointed officials and more than a million Black policy makers has organized a National Black Political Convention to be held June 9-12 at the Genesis Convention Center in Gary, Ind.

    The event is a follow up to a historic gathering convened in 1972 by then Gary Mayor Richard Hatcher.

    “The Gary Convention was perhaps the single most important political event for Black America held during the last century,” Tuskegee, Alabama Mayor Johnny Ford said in an interview this week. “With that Gary Convention came the inspiration and motivation that led to the election of more Black elected officials than any time since reconstruction.”

    Although he is founding co-chair of the National Policy Alliance, Ford says there will be no top leader. Other convention convenors are former Gary Mayor Richard Hatcher, original convenor in 1972; current Gary Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson; and Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, the son of poet and activist Amiri Baraka, an original convenor in 1972.

     

    According to NPA Executive Director Linda Haithcox, speakers will include Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan; Chicago Congressman Danny K. Davis (D-Ill.); Dr. Lezli Baskerville, president/CEO, National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education; NAACP Senior Vice President Hilary Shelton; Dr. E. Faye Williams, National Chair of the National Congress of Black Women; Flint, Michigan Mayor Karen Weaver; and Spencer Overton, president/CEO of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

    “We have no one leader. We don’t have a Martin Luther King. We don’t have a Malcolm. We have diversified if you will, whereby all of us have leadership roles,” Ford said.

     

    Some national leaders, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr., who had originally planned to attend, had to cancel due to Friday’s memorial services for boxing champion Muhammad Ali, organizers said.

     

    The main purpose of the gathering will be to establish a Black agenda that will result in equality and justice, Ford said.

    “The challenges facing the African-American community today are even greater than they were 44 years ago,” Ford said. “This convention is being held now because, If not now, when? If not us, who?”

    Ford listed issues including “high unemployment, crime in our communities, the need for better education, quality and affordable and accessible health care, the need to develop our infrastructures in the Black community” as being key to a Black agenda.

    These are issues being dealt with every day by state and local officials. “So, that’s why we who are closest to the people are providing the leadership.”

    Ford acknowledged that while the issues are similar to 1972, the modes of communication are different. For example, there was no Internet back then. This gathering will take full advantage of the new media, he said.

    “While this convention is not as well known or will be as big as the one that took place 44 years ago where more than 10,000 delegates came together and adopted a call for action, the African-American community in this country and even internationally will be able to be a part of this convention by [live] streaming – thanks to the Internet.”

    Regardless of who shows up, Ford says the significance of going back to Gary 44 years later is powerful because of the historic impact the convention made then.

    “Gary precedes glory,” he said. “Gary is a significant and historic return to a place that is sacred in the sense that it was at Gary that we shaped a national agenda. It will be at Gary that we will return to shape a 2016 national agenda.”

    Ford said he does not expect everyone to agree on everything. But where there is agreement will come the Black agenda, he said. “And that will be the agenda that we will present to the national Democratic Party, the national Republican Party and the nation and the world.”

     

    The Black agenda “will be revisited in the fall” during national, state and local elections, Haithcox says. “This agenda will be something that can be utilized in every state, county and city.”

  • Obama had some strong words for a gun-store owner who confronted him at a town-hall event in Indiana

    By Jeremy Berke, Business Insider

     

    President Obama at PBS Town Hall Meeting

    President Obama addresses PBS Town Hall Meeting

     

    President Barack Obama stuck around after a PBS Newshour town hall in Elkhart, Indiana, on Wednesday to answer a few questions.

    He had some strong words for a gun-store owner who asked him why he and Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential frontrunner, want to supposedly restrict and control the use of guns for the “good guys.”

    “First of all, the notion that I or Hillary or Democrats or whoever you want to choose are hell-bent on taking away folks’ guns is just not true,” Obama said. “And I don’t care how many times the NRA says it.”

    Obama then claimed there have actually been more guns sold since he has been president than any time in US history. And it’s true: Gun sales — based on the number of FBI criminal-background checks — increased by 65% over the period between 2008 and 2013, according to the Annenberg Public Policy Center.

    Obama continued: I just came from a meeting today in the Situation Room in which I got people who we know have been on ISIL Web sites, living here in the United States, U.S. citizens, and we’re allowed to put them on the no-fly list when it comes to airlines, but because of the National Rifle Association, I cannot prohibit those people from buying a gun.

    This is somebody who is a known ISIL sympathizer. And if he wants to walk in to a gun store or a gun show right now and buy as much — as many weapons and ammo as he can, nothing’s prohibiting him from doing that, even though the FBI knows who that person is.

    “So, sir, I just have to say, respectfully, that there is a way for us to have common sense gun laws,” Obama said. “… but the only way we’re going to do that is if we don’t have a situation in which anything that is proposed is viewed as some tyrannical destruction of the Second Amendment.”

  • 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

     

    tumblr_mzpdgf0ho31ren1y6o1_1280

    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.