Greene County Democrat

Category: Politics

  • Newswire : A new message rings out at royal coronation: “Not My King”

    Demonstrators in Britain


     May 8, 2023 (GIN) – Along streets packed with Londoners, visitors from around the world, and members of the royal class, the coronation of Charles and Camilla was a sumptuous display of pageantry, trumpet fanfare, and gun salutes.
    A glittering gold stagecoach built in 1760 was on hand to carry the royals to Buckingham Palace.
     
    But the crowd of three million was not the same as the subjects of empire in days gone by. How much has changed could be seen in waving signs reading “Not My King!”
     
    “Society has changed,” said reporter Liz Stephens.  “The Royal Family is not representative of the society we live in.”
     
    “We have a lavish coronation at a time of financial hardship for many,” Stephens said. “I think it’s a disgrace,” added a protestor. “To think this country is in a mess and we’re spending out millions on a coronation.”
     
    At the royal coronation, the public will be asked to pledge their allegiance. But many would much rather bid farewell to the monarchy entirely, given its ties to colonialism and anti-LGBTQ+ laws around the world.
     
    In 1952, as Queen Elizabeth acceded to the throne, British forces declared a state of emergency in Kenya – part of a shrinking British Empire as colonies broke away, seeking independence.
     
    The Kenya Land and Freedom Army, erroneously called “Mau Mau”, was a militant African national movement among the Kikuyu people that was a key element in Kenya’s path to independence.
    More than 20,000 Kikuyas were put in British detention camps while 11,000 rebels died in the fighting. 
     
    For many, the British monarchy is tied to that harm – the royals ruled over the empire, profited heavily from it, and, it’s argued, were complicit in it.
     
    Many believe King Charles’s coronation is a perfect opportunity to face up to this history and reflect on whether the monarchy should even continue to exist.
     
    Jeremiah Garsha, an assistant professor at University College Dublin, said: “I do think that 2023 is going to be that watershed moment where we look back and see there is no place for a monarchy anymore in a new Britain.”
     
    “For us, as South Africans, obviously this is not something to be excited or happy about,” said Kealeboga Maphunye, professor of African politics at the University of South Africa (UNISA). “It’s actually sadness because right now the country is reeling from much of the colonial legacy of the British era.
     
    “As we speak, I’m told the monarch will be carrying the staff (the royal scepter) which has one of our diamonds from South Africa.” South African activists have been demanding that the UK return the world’s largest diamond, the Great Star of Africa, which is kept with other jewels in the Tower of London.
     
    “They refer to us today as third world countries,” added  Mohammed Ali of Johannesburg, “because most countries on the continent are poor due to the mineral resources colonialists looted. They are rich because of us and should now return what they looted.”
     
    Victor Izekor, a retired journalist, condemned the British invasion of Benin Kingdom in southern Nigeria, carting away artifacts. They love their British tradition but they came to destroy ours,” he said.
     
    The Commonwealth, a group of nations mostly made up of places once claimed by the British Empire, sees the coronation with apathy at best. King Charles should being repairing the damage of colonialism, said Australian senator Lidia Thorpe, “including returning the stolen wealth that has been taken from our people.”
     

  • Newswire : UN experts say: US must tackle police brutality against Black people head-on

    By: Ed Pilkington / Guardian UK
    


    Historic two-week tour of US ends with call for nationwide commitment to address racial discrimination in dealings with law

    The US must move beyond piecemeal reform and slogan-making and tackle the ongoing scourge of police brutality and law enforcement’s discrimination against Black people, a United Nations mission has concluded at the end of a historic two-week tour of the country.
    UN experts completed their first official visit to the US as part of a system of global inquiries set up by the human rights council after the police murder of George Floyd in May 2020. As they ended their tour on Friday in Washington DC, the experts called for a nationwide commitment to address discrimination suffered by Black Americans in their daily dealings with the law.
    “In the US, racial inequity dates back to the very creation of this country and there’ll be no quick fixes,” said Dr Tracie Keesee, one of two independent UN experts who conducted the visit. “To this day, racial discrimination permeates through encounters with law enforcement – from first contact, arrest, detention, sentencing and disenfranchisement.”
    What was needed was a “whole government approach”, Keesee added. “This needs to be more than a slogan and calls for reform.”
    In the course of their 15-day mission Keesee and Juan Méndez of Argentina, visited six US cities: Washington, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Chicago, Minneapolis and New York. Their mission was to investigate excessive use of force, militarized policing, racial profiling and other human rights violations by law enforcement and penal agencies against Black Americans.
    As they crisscrossed the country, the experts had emotional encounters with families of the victims of police killings and other law enforcement abuses. In Minneapolis, where a white police officer murdered George Floyd on 25 May 2020, the panel spent time with the mothers of Philando Castile and Amir Locke, who were also killed by law enforcement in the city.
    Locke’s mother, Karen Wells, told the visiting experts: “You are probably wondering, why is there an empty chair right here? Because that’s where Amir should be sitting. All of the families now have an empty chair.”
    Presenting their preliminary findings, Keesee said that they had witnessed a pattern that could be traced to what she called the “deep intrinsic legacy” of slavery and legalized discrimination. She said that across the country there remained “a lack of awareness and acknowledgment of the extent to which racial inequities” were still prevalent.
    The result was a “culminating exhaustion in the Black community”, the UN expert said.
    Méndez, a former UN special rapporteur on torture, said that he had been moved throughout the visit by the “harrowing pain of victims and their families, and the resounding calls for accountability”.
    “We support those calls for accountability,” Méndez said.
    He was heartened by successful prosecutions of police officers involved in high-profile killings such as that of Floyd. However, many more cases remained unresolved, suggesting a continuing degree of impunity.
    Méndez added that their mission would be calling on the US justice department to make “more serious and proactive” use of its powers through consent decrees to intervene in the inner workings of local police departments to address some of the most egregious abuses. “More robust government action is needed,” he said.
    The UN experts will present their final report to the human rights council in Geneva in September or October. They indicated that among the demands they are likely to make is a call for better nationwide data and record keeping.
    In the absence of a national database, Méndez said, police officers who had complaints of misconduct or excessive force filed against them were allowed to continue serving, in some cases going on to be involved in killings of Black people. He added: “The mechanism also received allegations of police officers who were previously guilty and or disciplined for misconduct, afterwards being hired by a different police department.”
    Among other likely demands signaled by the experts were:
    A call for an end to racial profiling in policing.
    A dramatic reduction in the use of solitary confinement in US jails and prisons, and the total abolition of isolated incarceration for children under 18.
    Passage of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act which tackles racial bias and excessive use of force but which has stalled in Congress.
    An end to stereotyping of Black women and girls as angry and “aged up”.
    Rooting out of white supremacist law enforcement officers to ensure that they no longer wear the badge.
    The completed visit marks an intensification in the UN’s focus on racial justice in America in the aftermath of the Floyd killing and the summer of protests it triggered across the US and around the world. A year after Floyd died, the then UN high commissioner for human rights, Michelle Bachelet, lamented what she called the “insufficient” steps taken in the US to “stop people of African descent from being killed”.
    Fatal police shootings affecting all races and ethnicities have continued unabated since the summer of Black Lives Matter protests. The average still runs at a rate of almost three people daily.
    In April 2021, the human rights council set up what it called the Expert Mechanism to Advance Racial Justice and Equality in law enforcement (EMLER). It is part of a network of independent UN experts and monitors used to cajole governments to do more to address human rights violations in their territories.
    Though they have no powers to enforce their findings, UN experts have shown themselves able to profoundly influence domestic political debate, especially within the US. In June 2018, the Donald Trump White House’s then ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, pulled the US out of membership of the human rights council, complaining that it was a “cesspool of political bias”.
    Haley, who is currently vying with Trump for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, made her move just days before the UN monitor on extreme poverty delivered a withering report on US deprivation after a similar two-week tour of the country. In October 2021, the Joe Biden White House reversed course, re-entering the US into the human rights council.

  • Newswire : California panel takes big step toward $800 billion reparation payments to Black residents, and formal apology

    By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent


    California’s reparations task panel approved recommendations to compensate and apologize to Black communities for centuries of discrimination.
 At a meeting in Oakland, the nine-member committee, which first met nearly two years ago, approved a lengthy list of reparations recommendations for state lawmakers to examine.
At the meeting, U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), called on states and the federal government to implement reparations legislation. Lee said reparations are morally justified and could solve historical racial imbalances and inequality.
The panel’s first vote accepted a detailed assessment of Black Californian discrimination in voting, housing, education, disproportionate policing and incarceration, and others.
Other suggestions included creating a new organization to serve descendants of enslaved people and calculating what the state owes them.
“An apology and an admission of wrongdoing alone is not going to be satisfactory,” said Chris Lodgson, an organizer with the Coalition for a Just and Equitable California, a reparations advocacy group.
The task force’s draft recommendation requires parliamentarians to “censure the gravest barbarities” on behalf of the state in their apologies.
The task force noted that California’s first elected governor, Peter Hardeman Burnett, was a white supremacist who supported legislation excluding Black people from the state.
The draft report states that California, a “free” state since 1850, did not pass any laws guaranteeing freedom for all. Instead, the state Supreme Court enforced the federal Fugitive Slave Act for over a decade until freedom arrived in U.S. states.
“By participating in these horrors, California further perpetuated the harms African Americans faced, imbuing racial prejudice throughout society through segregation, public and private discrimination, and unequal state and federal funding,” the study authors wrote.
The task team adopted a public apology, admitting the state’s past wrongs and committing not to repeat them. It would be presented to the descendants of enslaved people. California apologized for interning Japanese Americans and mistreating Native Americans.
The panel adopted the draft report’s “cash or its equivalent” restitution for qualified residents.
Oakland’s Mills College of Northeastern University hosted over 100 citizens and activists. All lamented the country’s “broken promise” to give emancipated slaves 40 acres and a mule.
Many claimed it was time for governments to fix the harms that prevented African Americans from living without fear of being wrongly punished, maintaining property, and earning wealth.
Former Black Panther Party chairwoman Elaine Brown encouraged protests.
The task force meeting was viewed as a pivotal moment in the push for local, state, and federal agencies to apologize for African American discrimination.
“There’s no way in the world that many of these recommendations are going to get through because of the inflationary impact,” said University of San Diego School of Law professor and reparations specialist Roy L. Brooks.
Economists predict the state may owe Black residents $800 billion, or 2.5 times its yearly budget.The newest task force draft report has a much lower figure.
In 2020, Secretary of State Shirley Weber, a former Democratic assembly member, authored legislation creating the task force to address the state’s historical culpability for African American harms, not as a substitute for federal reparations.
The task team initially limited reparations to descendants of 19th-century enslaved or free Black individuals.
As reparations for African Americans have had uneven success elsewhere, the group’s work has received national attention.
Black residents in the Chicago suburb of Evanston, Illinois, recently received housing vouchers as reparations, but few reportedly used them.
A bill to acknowledge the inhumanity of slavery in New York and form a panel to investigate reparations proposals has cleared the Assembly but not the Senate.
A decades-old federal proposal to form a reparations panel for African Americans has stalled in Congress.
 Oakland City Council member Kevin Jenkins called the California task group “a powerful example” of what can happen when people work together.
Jenkins stated, “I am confident that through our collective efforts, we can significantly advance reparations in our great state of California and, ultimately, the country.”

  • Newswire: President Biden to deliver Howard University’s commencement address

    Howard University commencement

    By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent

    Howard University President Wayne A. I. Frederick has confirmed that President Joe Biden will deliver the commencement address at the historically Black university’s 155th ceremony.
Officials have scheduled commencement activities for 10 a.m. on May 13 on the Upper Quadrangle of the main campus.
Erica Loewe, the White House’s Director of African American Media, stated that in addition to Biden’s address at Howard University, administration officials plan to attend commencements at HBCUs nationwide.
According to the White House, President Biden’s impending visit to Howard, the alma mater of Vice President Kamala Harris, follows the administration’s record-breaking investment of nearly $6 billion through the U.S. Department of Education to support HBCUs since 2021.
“Securing funding for the more than 100 HBCUs in the United States has been a prominent feature of Biden’s domestic agenda,” Loewe wrote on Twitter.
In addition, the visit coincides with the publication of new data showing the lowest Black unemployment rate in U.S. history.
“It is an honor and privilege to welcome President Biden to deliver the 2023 commencement address and celebrate the 2023 graduating class,” Dr. Frederick said.
Biden will also receive an honorary Doctor of Letters degree during the commencement. “This honorary Doctor of Letters is much deserved for his years of transformational service as U.S. Senator, Vice President, and now as President of the United States,” Dr. Frederick stated.
“We are excited to receive the president as this year’s distinguished guest and recognize him for his relentless work uplifting our communities that have been historically left behind.
“I look forward to honoring President Biden, our honorary degree recipients, and graduating seniors at the Commencement Convocation.”
Biden was the first of four children born to Catherine Eugenia Finnegan Biden and Joseph Robinette Biden, Sr., in Scranton, Pennsylvania. The Biden family relocated to Claymont, Delaware, in 1953.
Biden attended the University of Delaware and Syracuse University School of Law and served on the New Castle County Council. The Wilmington, Delaware, Amtrak station bears Biden’s name.
The president was among the youngest individuals ever elected to the United States Senate at age 29.
At 80, Biden has confirmed his candidacy for re-election, and a victory would make him the oldest elected president in American history. Harris became the first African American and female vice president.
Biden would be the seventh incumbent U.S. president to deliver Howard’s commencement speech.

  • COVID-19

    As of May 8, 2023 at 10:00 AM
    (According to Alabama Political Reporter)

    Alabama had 1,658,639 confirmed cases of coronavirus,
    (2,978) more than last report, with 21,137 deaths, 4 more
    than last report.

    Greene County had 2,348 confirmed cases, 8 more cases than last report, with 54 deaths

    Sumter Co. had 3,219 cases with 55 deaths

    Hale Co. had 5,786 cases with 110 deaths

    Note: Greene County Physicians Clinic has testing and vaccination for COVID-19; including the new bivalent booster for Omicron variants.
    Call for appointments at 205/372-3388, Ext. 142;
    ages 5 and up.

  • Newswire : Drug Companies consider move to Africa for locally manufactured vaccines

    Giving a vaccine
    May 1, 2023 (GIN) – African leaders have begun exploring the possibility of building manufacturing facilities for critical vaccines in their countries and ending their reliance on foreign countries for high-priced drugs.
    Moderna Inc said this week it would set up a facility in Kenya – its first in Africa – to produce messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines, including COVID-19 shots.
    Moderna expects to invest about $500 million in the Kenyan facility and supply as many as 500 million doses of mRNA vaccines to the continent each year. 
    It took a pandemic to expose the fact that African countries import 99% of their vaccines. Africa has around ten vaccine manufacturers, but most do not make a vaccine’s active ingredients, and instead ‘fill and finish’ imported products.
    Late last year, a South African drugmaker announced a deal to make the first Covid-19 vaccine in Africa for Africa.
    The company, Aspen Pharmacare, agreed to produce its version of Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 shot. At the time, the continent’s immunization rate lagged well behind Western countries almost a year after their vaccines were first rolled out.
    African leaders, including President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa, who had grown tired of being at the mercy of other governments for shots during the pandemic, hailed the agreement as a milestone in the continent’s effort to set up its own vaccine-production facilities.
    A lack of manufacturing is one reason that only 11% of the continent’s people have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19. African leaders, meeting for their annual summit in Addis Ababa last week, reiterated a target of vaccinating 70% of their populations this year.
    So far, only Mauritius and Seychelles have met the 70% target, and COVAX, an initiative to provide vaccines for low- and middle-income countries, is running out of money.
    Currently less than 1% of vaccines administered on the continent are manufactured locally, leaving countries unable to quickly respond to pandemics and other crises. Vaccines currently needed in Africa include those for chickenpox, diphtheria – tetanus, flue, measles, mumps, polio and shingles.
    Strive Masiyiwa, African Union special envoy on COVID-19 and head of the African Vaccine Acquisition Trust, commented on the new developments. 
    “It gets us one step closer to securing Africa’s future vaccine production,” he said, “and ensures that the gross vaccine inequality we witnessed in the early part of the pandemic is not repeated.”
     

  • Newswire : New Orleans teen shatters record with $10M in scholarship offers

    Dennis Maliq Barnes

    By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior

    Teenager Dennis Barnes has shattered multi-million-dollar records and gaining interest from colleges and universities everywhere.
Barnes, who goes by his middle name Maliq, is a senior at International High School in New Orleans and has earned more than $9 million in scholarship money during the college application process.
In shattering the previous record of $8.7 million, Barnes received 170 acceptances from 200 applications.
Barnes told the New Orleans NBC News station, “I started to apply to schools, and as I’ve gone through the process, the numbers just started increasing.”
Barnes and school counselor Denise James worked to shatter the $8.7 million record after Barnes realized he was close.
The record is further impressive because there are no third-party scholarships.
Instead, all his offers came directly from the schools.
Barnes first spent many hours applying to schools around the country, he told NBC News. However, as a teenager, school, and extracurriculars took precedence over his pursuit.
“I was still doing other things,” Barnes said. “I did incorporate it into my schedule one way or another, but I just did it whenever I had time.”
Barnes’ participation in track and basketball and serving as the National Honors Society executive president made him a well-rounded applicant.
He has a 4.98 GPA and speaks Spanish through an immersion school. That primary school foundation was imperative in his decision to attend International High School.
“That school was very important for me and my journey,” he told the network.
“They set a strong foundation for me going into high school, and I think that’s a big reason I could say I am where I am today.” International High School opened in 2009, when Barnes graduated from middle school.
The school’s strong language department, which provides French, Spanish, Arabic, and Mandarin, was a big lure for him, as he wanted to practice his Spanish.
“There are plenty of options at the school that I could have chosen from to continue with my languages, be able to strengthen them, and continue to learn,” Barnes said.
Barnes immediately impacted the charter school despite combining his sophomore and junior years into one with a dual enrollment at Southern University in New Orleans.
He also noted International High School’s academic reputation. “They are known for putting out million-dollar scholars, so whenever the idea was presented to me by my counselor, I hopped on board,” he said.
Barnes advised prospective college students to value education, especially African American students. “There’s always something in the news for athletics. And I think there’s a stigma put on African Americans — probably others, too,” he said about academic success.
“I think that doing well in school and understanding the importance of education is something that could break that stigma.”
Barnes credits his parents and James for his success. James helped him apply to institutions, prepare for college, and dual enrollment. “She has guided me and instructed me in my best interest; that will move me forward,” he stated. “James has helped me get where I am.”
Barnes said he’s grateful and excited about all scholarships and acceptances.
Still, he insists that he’s incredibly proud of those from well-known institutions like Xavier and LSU and other schools that traditionally don’t provide many scholarships.
Barnes now aims to exceed $10 million in scholarships and acceptances in the coming days. With 170 acceptances, he said he’s being more selective and won’t hedge on which school he’ll choose.
Barnes plans to decide by May 2.

  • Newswire : Carolyn Bryant Donham, Emmett Till’s false accuser, dies at 88

    Emmett Till and Carolyn B. Donham

    By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent

    The white woman who testified that a Black teenager named Emmett Till had made inappropriate approaches toward her, which led to his lynching and murder in Mississippi in 1955, has died.
According to a coroner’s report, Carolyn Bryant Donham, 88, died while receiving hospice care in Louisiana.
A death record issued on Thursday, April 27, in the Calcasieu Parish Coroner’s Office noted that Donham died in Westlake, Louisiana, two nights earlier.
Donham’s false claims against Emmett Till set off a chain of events that sparked the modern civil rights movement.
After the teen’s mother insisted his casket remain open during the funeral and photos of Till’s battered and mutilated body appeared in Jet Magazine, the world received a birds-eye view of the brutality of America’s rampant racism.
In August 1955, Till traveled from Chicago to Mississippi to spend time with relatives.
Donham, then 21 years old and going by the name Carolyn Bryant, accused Till of making inappropriate approaches toward her while she worked at a grocery shop in the small town of Money, Mississippi.
According to the Reverend Wheeler Parker, a cousin of Till who was present at the time, the 14-year-old Till whistled at the woman, which was an act that violated the racist social standards that were prevalent in Mississippi.
Evidence suggested a lady identified Emmett Till to Donham’s then-husband Roy Bryant and his half-brother J.W. Milam, who were responsible for Till’s murder.
An all-white jury acquitted the two white suspects, but the men later confessed their guilt in an interview with Look magazine.
In 2022, the Associated Press secured a copy of Donham’s unpublished memoir, in which she claimed that she had no idea what would become of Till.
The outlet noted that the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting was the first organization to reveal the contents of the 99-page book titled “I am More Than A Wolf Whistle.”
Author and historian Timothy Tyson of Durham, North Carolina, gave reporters a copy of the book. Tyson claimed he received a copy from Donham in 2008 while interviewing her, the Associated Press reported.
Though Tyson claimed to have provided the FBI with the text, the agency ended its lengthy investigation into Donham in 2021. The book was deposited in an archive at the University of North Carolina with the promise that it would only be made public at a later time.
Tyson stated that he decided to make it public after individuals performing research at the Leflore County courthouse in Mississippi in June 2022 discovered an arrest warrant on abduction charges that were issued for “Mrs. Roy Bryant” in 1955 but were never served or executed.
In March 2022, President Joe Biden signed the Emmett Till Anti-lynching Act of 2022, making lynching a federal hate crime. Earlier, the bipartisan measure passed both chambers of Congress.
The legislation received pushback from three Republicans – Andrew Clyde of Georgia, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, and Chip Roy of Texas. Each was the lone vote against the bill.
“I could not have been prouder to stand behind President Biden as he signed the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act into law,” National Urban League President Marc Morial stated.
“The act of lynching is a weapon of racial terror that has been used for decades, and our communities are still impacted by these hate crimes to this day,” Morial continued.
“This bill is long overdue, and I applaud President Biden and Members of Congress for their leadership in honoring Emmett Till and other lynching victims by passing this significant piece of legislation.”
According to the bill’s text, “Whoever conspires to commit any offense… shall (A) if death results from the offense, be imprisoned for any term of years or for life.” “(B) In any other case, be subjected to the same penalties as the penalties prescribed for the offense of the commission of which was the object of the conspiracy.”
Specifically, the legislation makes lynching a federal hate crime, punishable by up to life in prison.
The measure had faced defeat for over 100 years, with lawmakers attempting to pass the legislation more than 200 times. The House finally passed the bill on a 422-3 vote. It passed unanimously in the Senate.

  • Newswire : President Biden calls Black Press ‘heroes’ during pointed and hilarious White House Correspondents Dinner

    President Joe Biden

    By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent

    President Joe Biden proved likely as funny and prescient in his White House Correspondents Dinner remarks as hired comedian and Daily Show correspondent Roy Wood Jr.
But the commander in chief struck a rather serious and forceful tone during his 22-minute speech when he declared how vital the Black Press remains after 196 years of speaking truth to power.
After hilariously railing on everyone from Fox News, Tucker Carlson, Donald Trump and Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the president made fun of himself in a tour de force of hilariously self-deprecating jokes.
But, it was his proclamation calling the Black Press heroes that punctuated a 22-plus minute speech that proved one for the ages.
“During Black History Month this year, I hosted the screening of the movie Till, the president stated, after such quips like “MSNBC is owned by NBC Universal and Fox News is owned by Dominion Voting Systems.”
“The story of Emmett Till and his mother is a story of a family’s promise and loss and a nation’s reckoning with hate, violence, and the abuse of power,” Biden recounted as he started his championing of the Black Press.
“It’s a story that was seared into our memory and our conscience – the nation’s conscience – when Mrs. Till insisted that an open casket for her murdered and maimed 14-year-old son be the means by which he was transported. She said, ‘Let the people see what I’ve seen.’”
The president continued: “The reason the world saw what she saw was because of another hero in this story: the Black Press. That’s a fact. Jet Magazine, the Chicago Defender, and other Black radio and newspapers were unflinching and brave in making sure America saw what she saw. And I mean it.”
He quoted Ida B. Wells, who exclaimed that “The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon the wrongs.”
“That’s the sacred view, in my view,” Biden asserted. “That’s the sacred charge of a free press. And I mean that.”

Before given way to Wood, the president reminisced about the 2022 dinner.
“As I said last year at this dinner, a poison is running through our democracy and parts of the extreme press,” Biden reasserted.
“The truth buried by lies and lies living on as truth. Lies told for profit and power. Lies of conspiracy and malice repeated over and over again, designed to generate a cycle of anger, hate, and even violence.”
He concluded: “A cycle that emboldens history to be buried, books to be banned, children and families to be attacked by the state, and the rule of law and our rights and freedoms to be stripped away. And where elected representatives of the people are expelled from statehouses for standing for the people.”
“I’ve made clear that we know in our bones – and you know it too – our democracy remains at risk. But I’ve also made it clear, as I’ve seen throughout my life, it’s within our power, each and every one of us, to preserve our democracy. We can. We must. We will.”
National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) President and CEO Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr., who sat nearby as the president spoke, offered praise to Biden.
“The NNPA thanks President Joe Biden for highlight the strategic importance and ongoing value of the Black Press of America,” Chavis stated.
“Biden’s speech to the 2023 White House Correspondents Dinner in Washington, D.C., was another historic tribute to the Black Press as the NNPA reaffirms being the trusted voice of Black America.”
    Roy Woods, Jr. continued: “You are trying to erase Black people and a lot of Black people wouldn’t mind some of that erasure as long as that Black person is Clarence Thomas.”
And while Trump, and so many others proved targets, Wood didn’t spare Biden.
“When the retirement age went up two years to 64 [in France] they rioted because they didn’t want to work till 64,” Wood said. “Meanwhile in America, we have an 80-year-old man begging us for four more years of work.”

     

  • COVID-19

    As of April 30, 2023 at 10:00 AM
    (According to Alabama Political Reporter)

    Alabama had 1,655,661 confirmed cases of coronavirus,
    (1,514) more than last report, with 21,133 deaths, no more
    than last report.

    Greene County had 2,340 confirmed cases, 8 more cases than last report, with 54 deaths

    Sumter Co. had 3,216 cases with 55 deaths

    Hale Co. had 5,783 cases with 110 deaths

    Note: Greene County Physicians Clinic has testing and vaccination for COVID-19; including the new bivalent booster for Omicron variants.
    Call for appointments at 205/372-3388, Ext. 142;
    ages 5 and up.