The Greene County Democrat

Category: World News

  • Newswire: African abortion rights based on Roe vs Wade now at risk after Supreme Court decision

    Maternal care in Senegal

    June 27, 2022 (GIN) – In Africa, where the risk of dying from an unsafe abortion is the highest in the world, Roe v Wade has long been an important weapon in the arsenal of those fighting to liberalize abortion laws and make the procedure safer for women and girls despite it rarely being invoked by name. 

    Human rights lawyer Stephanie Musho, a Kenyan, pointed to the case of Tunisia which liberalized their law limiting abortions just nine months after the Roe v Wade ruling – allowing women to access the service on demand.

    Cape Verde allowed for abortion on request prior to 12 weeks gestation which aligns with Roe v Wade holding of the same.

    “US policies on abortion,” she wrote in Al Jazeera, “whether we like it or not, significantly influence how seriously governments around the world take the issue of unsafe abortions.”

    A surprising number of decisions reveal African courts referencing the Roe v Wade ruling. In a recent decision by the High Court of Kenya in Malindi, abortion care was called a fundamental right under the Kenyan Constitution and arbitrary arrests and prosecution of patients and healthcare providers for seeking or offering such services were outlawed.

    The court relied upon the principles set out in previous SCOTUS (Supreme Court of The United States) decisions including Roe v Wade; Griswold v Connecticut; Eisenstadt v Baird; and Rochin v California among others. 

    “Thus the move by SCOTUS overturning Roe v Wade will also put the right to abortion in further jeopardy in my own country,” warned Musho.

    Still, Kenya’s High Court’s ruling was greeted with applause from Evelyn Opondo, senior regional director for Africa at the Center for Reproductive Rights, who called it “a victory for all women, girls, and health care providers who have been treated as criminals for seeking and providing abortion care… The Court has vindicated our position by affirming that forcing a woman to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term or to seek out an unsafe.”

    Now, some 30 years after Roe v Wade, the African Union has finally adopted the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa, known as the Maputo Protocol, Musho wrote in the CommonDreams news site. 

    The protocol explicitly requires countries to authorize medical abortions in cases of sexual assault, rape, incest, or where the continued pregnancy endangers the health of the mother – a provision that draws from the UN’s Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women which based its argument on access to safe abortion on Roe v Wade.

    Today, of the 55 member countries in the AU, 49 have signed the protocol and 43 have ratified it.

    Since South Africa’s legalization of abortion on demand been a decrease in deaths from clandestine abortions (those provided outside of designated facilities), but the number of deaths following abortions are still quite high according to statistics gathered in Gauteng province—5% of maternal deaths following childbirth are abortion related, and 57% of these are related to illegal abortions. w/pix of Senegalese teen mom 

  • Newswire: What is the Biden Administration doing to free Brittney Griner?

    By Zack Linly, NewsOne

    WNBA basketball superstar Brittney Griner arrives at a hearing at the Khimki Court outside Moscow on June 27, 2022. ( Source: KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV / Getty)

    Here’s a thought: Why is Brittney Griner still in jail and what is the Biden administration doing about bringing her home?
    Griner has been locked up in a Russian jail since February for allegedly possessing vape cartridges that contained hashish oil. It took until May for the State Department to classify her “wrongfully detained,” which meant the U.S. could expand its efforts to bring her home despite the law in Russia. So, it took more than three months just for our government to grant her the classification needed to really begin efforts to bring her back to the U.S.
    And yet, nearly every time there’s an update on Griner’s situation, it’s a story about her detention being extended or her wife, Cherelle Griner, urging Joe Biden to take swifter action or the government claiming her release is a “top priority” but not saying much else about what’s being done. (Meanwhile, the administration has announced the prisoner exchange of Trevor Reed, a former Marine from Texas who allegedly assaulted a Russian officer arresting him in 2019. This, of course, only increased public outcry for Griner’s release.)
    In fact, throughout all of this, Biden has claimed his administration has been working tirelessly to bring Griner back to the states, but where’s the evidence of this great effort?
    According to the New York Times, last week, “dozens of organizations representing people of color, women and L.G.B.T.Q. voters called on President Biden” by sending him a letter urging him to finally strike a deal for the WNBA star’s release.
    From the Times: In a letter sent to Mr. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the groups said Ms. Griner “continues to endure inhumane treatment, deprived of contact with her family.”
    The letter said the United States “has acknowledged that Brittney is essentially a political pawn in classifying her as wrongfully detained.” And while the signatories cited “deep appreciation” for the administration’s efforts to free Ms. Griner, “we now urge you to make a deal to get Brittney back home to America immediately and safely.”
     Cherelle praised the letter while also noting that she doesn’t believe any negotiations for her wife’s release have taken place at all.
    “To my understanding, they have not started negotiating her release, and so this letter is very powerful because it’s much-needed support to highlight the fact that we are at the phase where you guys should be making a deal,” Cherelle said.
    Meanwhile, Griner is finally scheduled for a trial date this Friday., July 1, 2022. She’s facing up to 10 years if convicted.

  • Newswire: Justice Clarence Thomas and the conservative Supreme Court have fanned the flames of racism in America

    By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent

    Justice Clarence Thomas

    The Supreme Court not only abolished abortion rights in America with its June 24, 2022, decision but also ended any semblance of racial tolerance in the United States.
Former President Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again cry proved an easy to read between-the-lines moniker, but even that was seen as nothing more than the typical dog whistle – until now.
 After the high court’s ruling, the MAGA crowd has become more emboldened.
“President Trump, on behalf of all the Maga patriots in America, I want to thank you for the historic victory for white life in the Supreme Court [June 24],” Illinois Republican Mary Miller told a cheering crowd during a rally as she stood next to the former president.
Running for reelection in the 15th congressional district, Miller received an invite from Trump to speak. Her camp attempted to deflect from her racist comment, stating that she misspoke and intended to say, “right to life.”
Responding to a tweet by the nation’s first African American president, Texas GOP Sen. John Cornyn compared the decision to reverse Roe v. Wade to segregation.
“Now do Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education,” Cornyn tweeted at Obama following the 44th president writing that the court not only reversed nearly 50 years of precedent, “it relegated the most intensely personal decision someone can make to the whims of politicians and ideologues – attacking the essential freedoms of millions of Americans.”
Cornyn thundered what many in the GOP and the high court’s conservative majority have always whispered: a desire to overturn Brown v. Board of Education and resurrect the 1800s doctrine of “separate but equal” to re-establish racial segregation laws that inherently imply that Black people are inferior.
“In future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a day before abolishing Roe.
Thomas and fellow conservatives had struck down a New York law that restricted gun ownership. “Because any substantive due process decision is demonstrably erroneous … we have a duty to correct the error established in those precedents,” said Thomas.
The justice has gained the turncoat nickname, Uncle Thomas, from African Americans and others.
In the 1965 Griswold v. Connecticut case, the court voted 7-2 to strike down a law restricting married couples’ access to birth control.
The majority stated that such statutes are impermissible because they violate the right to privacy for citizens.
The cases of Lawrence and Obergefell respectively made same-sex activity and marriages legal.
Jim Obergefell, the plaintiff in that landmark case, called Thomas out in a nationally televised interview.
He noted that Thomas specifically named same-sex and contraceptive rights, in his opinion, omitting interracial marriage. If the court overturned that law, Thomas’ marriage to Ginni, who is white, would face peril.
“He omitted Loving v. Virginia because it affects him personally,” Obergefell stated.
Striking a severe nerve, Thomas went a step further when voting to strike down New York’s gun law, even after more than 277 mass shootings have occurred in 2022.
The Black justice invoked the disgusting Dred Scott decision, where then-chief justice Roger Taney cautioned that African Americans would have the right to carry firearms in public if the court recognized them as U.S. citizens.
“Even Chief Justice Taney recognized that public carry was a component of the right to keep and bear arms – a right free Blacks were often denied in antebellum America,” Thomas dared to assert.
Justice Stephen Breyer noted the “serious dangers and consequences of gun violence” against the Second Amendment.
Thomas wasn’t done, however. He compared abortion statistics to soldiers killed during the Civil War. “I join the opinion of the court because it correctly holds that there is no constitutional right to abortion,” Thomas wrote.
“Abortion is not deeply rooted in this nation’s history and tradition. It’s not implicit in the concept of ordered liberty,” he said.
Attorney Daniel Goldman, the former lead counsel for the House Impeachment Committee who is running for Congress in New York’s 10th district, blasted Thomas.
“When you read Clarence Thomas’s concurrence, where he calls into question many other rights based on the fundamental right to privacy, remember that he testified unequivocally in his confirmation hearings that there is a right to privacy in the Constitution,” Goldman tweeted.

  • Newswire: Tantrums, violence and witness intimidation: Trump described like childish Mafia Boss in Jan. 6 hearing

    By Bruce C.T. Wright, NewsOne

    Cassidy Hutchinson testifies at Congressional Hearing

    Tuesday’s Jan. 6 hearing may have established the closest thing to a so-called “smoking gun” in a bipartisan Congressional effort to prove that Donald Trump not only incited violence at the U.S. Capitol last year but also did so knowing his angry supporters were armed.
    But that wasn’t necessarily the most surprising part of the hearing for anybody who knows anything about the former president and his reputation for being unhinged.
    Star witness Cassidy Hutchinson, who worked as an aide to Mark Meadows, Trump’s White House chief of staff, offered riveting testimony on Tuesday that may as well have been describing Tony Soprano, the sociopathic mafia boss portrayed by the late James Gandolfini on the iconic HBO crime series, “The Sopranos.”
    Hutchinson, 26, swore under oath while telling tales about Trump that placed a spotlight on the single-term Republican president’s penchant for entitled tantrums and initiating violence. That is not to mention credible allegations of witness tampering and intimidation that may have been inspired by Trump, if not directly ordered by him.
    And now, of course, Trump has reportedly moved to discredit Hutchinson and distance himself from her, albeit in a woefully unconvincing attempt.
    Those portions of Hutchinson’s testimony could have been written into a scene from classic movies that document the mafia’s criminal prowess, including “Goodfellas” and “Casino.”
    Tantrums
    While most if not all of us are very familiar with Trump’s rage — that’s the name of legendary reporter Bob Woodward’s literary profile of the former president — Hutchinson painted a vivid picture of a president who acted out physically when he didn’t get his way.
    She testified to seeing that rage firsthand when she described Trump’s reaction to learning that his Attorney General Bill Barr told the Associated Press in an interview following the 2020 election that there was no evidence of voter fraud. Barr’s comments in the interview undermined Trump’s “big lie” that he lost the 2020 election because of fraudulent absentee ballots that were determined to have never existed.
    Hutchinson said she heard a noise near the White House dining room and went to find out what happened. That’s when, she testified, that she found a “valet” cleaning up a mess on the dining room wall that came from food. Notably, Hutchinson referred to “ketchup” that she said was smeared on the wall. On the floor was a broken porcelain plate, Hutchinson said.
    “The valet had articulated that the president was extremely angry at the attorney general’s AP interview, and had thrown his lunch against the wall,” Hutchinson testified. She said she was advised to “steer clear” of Trump.
    Similarly, Hutchinson recounted a different instance of Trump’s alleged rage that involved food.
    “There were several times through my tenure with the chief of staff that I was aware of him either throwing dishes or flipping the tablecloth to let all the contents of the table go onto the floor and likely break or go everywhere,” Hutchinson testified.
    Witness intimidation and tampering
    Toward the end of Hutchinson’s testimony, Jan. 6 Committee Co-chair Rep. Lynn Cheney said that she had “received evidence of one particular practice that raises significant concern.” Cheney said people they subpoenaed had been contacted by others in an attempt to influence or impact their testimony.
    One unidentified person who testified said they were contacted and encouraged to “be a team player” in order to “stay in good graces in Trump World.”
    The most damning part came next: “And they have reminded me a couple of times that Trump does read transcripts and just to keep that in mind” amid testimony.
    For any fan of the aforementioned mob flicks, you know exactly what the above quotes mean.
    The spirit of such attempted witness intimidation and tampering is personified in the below legendary scene of “The Sopranos” when mob boss Tony (Gandolfini) uses an enforcer named Furio to physically intimidate a debtor into paying what is owed.
    While that scene isn’t as nuanced as the situation presented by Cheney, the employment of fear for retribution — whether political or physical — is the common denominator.
    As such, Norm Eisen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institue and a legal analyst for CNN, insisted that Trump is all but guaranteed to go to prison for the alleged thuggery.
    “Make no mistake, those texts we just saw will certainly lead to criminal investigation & perhaps prosecution under 18 USC 1512, which punishes witness intimidation with fines, imprisonment for not more than 20 years, or both,” Eisen tweeted.

    Violence
    It’s no secret that Trump is okay with violence. He’s the same man who once boasted he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue in New York City and not lose any voters. He’s flirted with nuclear war in the name of vanity.
    And so it followed in that same context that, according to Hutchinson, Trump incited violence at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, even as he knew that his followers were armed with guns and knives and other weapons.
    Trump was dismayed at the size of the crowd on Jan. 6 when he was advised that people on Capitol grounds had guns and were strategically positioning themselves in trees. Video footage played by the Jan. 6 Committee verified those allegations.
    Trump responded to the very real threat of violence and death by saying he would be safe and suggesting that’s all that mattered.
    “I don’t fucking care that they have weapons. They’re not here to hurt me. Take the fucking mags away,” Trump reportedly said in reference to “magnetometers,” which is another term for metal detectors.
    “Let my people in,” Trump continued without any apparent worry about what his armed supporters might do.
    An anecdote from Hutchinson also described how she was told that Trump physically attacked his own Secret Service agent for preventing the president from going to the Capitol.
    Hutchinson said one Secret Service agent told her that Trump employed a combination of the above two qualities of tantrums and intimidation when he was told he would not be driven to the U.S. Capitol as he requested.
    “I am the effing president, take me up to the Capitol now,” Trump said, according to the story Hutchinson told.
    Hutchinson said she was told Trump became “irate” and tried to grab the steering wheel of the SUV in which he was being driven back to the White House. When the Secret Service agent rebuffed Trump and moved his hand away, Hutchinson said she was told the president used his other hand to “lunge” at the Secret Service agent who was driving and grab his “clavicles,” which are also known as the collarbone.
    Despite the abundance of circumstantial evidence against Trump, it remained to be seen if 1) the Jan. 6 hearings will make any difference in the long run and 2) Trump will be criminally charged for what seems like a clear-cut case of sedition and conspiracy.
    If history is any indication, Trump loyalists will remain unswayed as the former president moves closer to mounting a new White house run in 2024.

  • Newswire: World health body wants new name for ‘monkeypox’ virus,calling it ‘discriminatory and stigmatizing’

    June 20, 2022 (GIN) – The World Health Organization (WHO) has announced plans to find a new name for the viral disease informally known as ‘monkeypox’ which, says the world body, is “discriminatory and stigmatizing.”
     
    WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, in a briefing on the matter, said the virus is no longer behaving as it did in the past and therefore should be renamed.
     
    But a public narrative persists in suggesting the current outbreak is linked to Africa, West Africa or Nigeria, noted a group of 29 biologists and other researchers. That builds on an existing stigma, although the virus has been detected without a clear link to Africa.
     
    The majority — 84 percent — of confirmed cases are from the European region, followed by the Americas, Africa, Eastern Mediterranean region and Western Pacific t obvious manifestation of this is the use of photos of African patients to depict the pox lesions in mainstream media in the global north,” the researchers said.
     
    Ahmed Ogwell, deputy director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and more than a dozen infectious disease experts in the U.S. and Europe are soliciting suggestions for a new name using the website virological.org.
     
    “We are removing the distinction between endemic and non-endemic countries, reporting on countries together where possible, to reflect the unified response that is needed,” the WHO said in its outbreak situation update dated June 17 but sent to media on Saturday.
     
    As for what the virus should be called, the scientists suggest starting with hMPXV, to denote the human version of the monkeypox virus. Rather than geographic locations, they say, letters and numbers should be used, based on order of discovery. In that system, the lineage behind the current international outbreak would be dubbed B.1.
     
    The Geneva-based UN health agency is due to hold an emergency meeting on June 23 to determine whether to classify the global monkeypox outbreak as a public health emergency of international concern – the highest alarm the UN agency can sound.
     
    It has been reported in 39 countries so far in 2022, and most of them are having their first-ever cases of the disease, according to the WHO. Worldwide, it says, there are around 3,100 confirmed or suspected cases, including 72 deaths. The normal initial symptoms include a high fever, swollen lymph nodes and a blistery chickenpox-like rash.
    Between January 1 and June 15, 2,103 confirmed cases, a probable case and one death have been reported to the WHO in 42 countries, it said.
     
     

  • Newswire: The real story of Juneteenth must be told, historians and educators say  By Hazel Trice Edney 

    Dr. Frank Smith, president/CEO of the African American Civil War Museum and Memorial

    (TriceEdneyWire.com) – When President Joe Biden signed into law the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act last year, making Juneteenth a federal holiday, he and Vice President Kamala Harris envisioned it as a holiday mostly for the celebration of freedom.
    “We are gathered here in a house built by enslaved people. We are footsteps away from where President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation,” said Harris at the White House signing ceremony alongside Black Caucus members on June 17, 2021. “We have come far, and we have far to go. But today is a day of celebration. It is not only a day of pride. It’s also a day for us to reaffirm and rededicate ourselves to action.”
    But, a year later, based on interviews with historians and educators around the nation, this year’s Juneteenth public holiday, Monday, June 20, 2022, will likely turn out to be mostly a day to turn up the struggle for freedom, justice and equality that have yet to be attained.
    “I had to warm up to this day like everybody else because it wasn’t on my radar as a significant holiday until Congress passed the bill,” said Dr. Frank Smith, president/CEO of the Washington, D.C.-based African American Civil War Museum and Memorial which will spend Juneteenth correcting a wrong. “We will be lifting up the names of those 200,000 Black troops” who helped defeat the Confederate Army in the Civil War,” Smith said, a story that is so often untold.
    The overwhelming bipartisanship support for the Juneteenth federal holiday came last year amidst widespread protests as millions of people took to the streets against police violence in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd and other racial traumas and inequities. It was the first federal holiday attained since Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day was established in 1983. But, African-Americans and several states had celebrated Juneteenth for decades as the day they’d been freed.
    However, given the nearly 4,000 lynchings of Black people across the U. S since the end of slavery; given the August 28,1955 killing of Emmett Till; the massacre of nine Black people by Dylann Roof at a Bible study in 2016, the horrific public murder of George Floyd by police only two years ago, and the shocking murders of 10 people in a racist rampage at a grocery store in Buffalo, N.Y. on May 14 this year, many think they’d best spend Juneteenth continuing to work for freedom instead of just celebrating it.
    Caroline Brewer, the author of 13 children’s books, agrees. She pointed out that Black people have long commemorated Juneteenth. Therefore, she has noticed that during the official holiday, her associates are leaning toward continuing their work to build up the Black community as she is attempting to do with Black children.
    “I think with any holiday, and when it comes to Black history, where most people that I know are and where I am is that I am celebrating Black history every day. I am doing something for the liberation of our people every day. So, I am focused on promoting my children’s books,” one of which is going to be published in August.
    The new book is titled, “Say Their Names”, Brewer said. “We’re having conversations about the trauma that we’ve experienced as Black people as a result of police violence and racial violence.”

  • Newswire: Vice President Kamala Harris talks voting rights, racism with Black press publishers By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent

    Vice President Harris stepping off helicopter

    Vice President Kamala Harris held an exclusive discussion with publishers from the National Newspaper Publishers Association, which represents the Black Press of America, to discuss various issues from voting rights to Roe v. Wade and racism in the United States.“The Black Press has been very special,” Harris told the publishers in a 30-minute conversation moderated by NNPA President and CEO Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr.“[The administration] doesn’t expect special treatment, just fair treatment to cover the accomplishments because they are significant and will have, in many cases, a generational impact on families and communities,” Harris remarked.With a record number of women of color representing the administration in various capacities, Harris asserted that “when people hold office reflect those impacted, we can effect change.”“At the top, as vice president, I am humbled and honored to hold this position,” she insisted.“I’ll say that I think this administration and President Joe Biden have been exceptional. For example, I recently gave a speech in South Carolina, and it was in South Carolina that President Biden, then a candidate, said he was going to put a Black woman on the United States Supreme Court.”In April, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson earned Senate confirmation as the first Black woman to the nation’s high court. “This president, our administration, has appointed more Black women to the federal court than, I believe, any administration in the history of this country,” Harris demanded.Also, she noted the appointment of former Congressional Black Caucus Chair Marcia Fudge as secretary of Housing and Urban Development. “One of the big issues affecting our country right now is affordable housing, and one of the accomplishments of our administration is the work we’ve been doing on home appraisals and how Black families’ homes get appraised for less than white people,” Harris said. “We have confronted that issue of biased appraisals,” she added.Harris said the administration understands the vital issue of voting rights, despite the Senate failing to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the suppression laws that Republican-led states have adopted.She acknowledged how the large voter turnout in the 2020 election and the special Senate election in Georgia in January 2021 helped catapult Democrats to the White House and control both chambers of Congress.“We need to pass legislation. But, short of that, we’re going to have to keep uplifting states that are doing good work around the right to vote every election cycle,” Harris offered.“If we help people to understand when they turned out in record numbers in 2020, what we were able to accomplish. We must remind people of what they get when they vote; that’s the reality we face, but we must speak up and keep fighting.”The vice president noted that many states with voter suppression laws also have statutes restricting other rights. “There’s an overlap that I think we should be aware of,” Harris insisted.Additionally, Harris offered concern about racism within politics. “I’m very concerned about elected officials around the country who won’t put a name on white supremacists,” Harris stated.She said part of the solution lies in communities. “One of the strongest tools is to build coalitions around communities that are targeted, to speak up and be informed so that nobody would be made to stand alone,” Harris said.“I believe in many ways [students] are entering an increasingly unsettled world. The things we took for granted as being settled are not settled.“Foreign policy, the concept of the sovereignty of a nation and its territorial integrity, the right to not be invaded by force … and you see what’s happened in Ukraine. For 70 years, Europe went without war, and now there is war.“Domestically, 70 years ago, we thought voting rights was settled. Shelby v. Holder gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013, and now we’re seeing laws sprout up all over the country denying people the ability to receive food and water if they are standing in line to vote. Unsettled is the woman’s ability to decide about her own body.“We’re not asking anyone to change their beliefs; just let everybody have what they believe and not have the government tell them what to do.”Harris concluded by sharing her planned celebration of Juneteenth. She said she would open the Vice President’s official residence, not to celebrities or politicians but to families and individuals from the various wards in the District of Columbia.“When you look at the epidemic of hate, all that says is that we as leaders have to make sure that we use our platform,” Harris said.“We have to speak the truth and speak with the spirit of trying to unify our communities.”

  • Despite apathy, activists and strategists urge
    Black voters not to sit out 2022 midterms

    By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent

    Sign-to-encourage-voting

    The failure of Congress to pass legislation like the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act have frustrated African Americans.
With new voter suppression laws, the leaked Roe V. Wade opinion, and the assault on many other rights, some question whether the voting bloc that allowed Democrats to take the White House and control both houses of Congress will abandon the polls during the midterm election.
“Black voters are understandably frustrated with the lack of reform around voter rights, but the lack of success with this is due to actions by Republicans, not Democrats,” insisted Dr. Michal Strahilevitz, the director of the Elfenworks Center for Responsible Business and marketing professor at Saint Mary’s College of California.
“Black voters are far more pragmatic than most segments of the Democratic voter base. I expect them to show up not so much to reward Democrats for their lackluster success as to limit the power Republicans have to stop the necessary reforms,” Strahilevitz continued.
“In short, black voters are not just a loyal part of the Democratic base, and they are a very practical one too.” Daniel Chan, chief technology officer at Marketplace Fairness, added that Black voters have several concerns that Democrats haven’t addressed adequately.
“These include police reform, voting rights, and economic inequality. If they do not turn out to vote in the midterms, the Democrats could lose control of Congress,” Chan offered.
“The party has plans to address some of these concerns, but more needs to be done. Black voters are an essential part of the Democratic coalition, and it is important that the party does more to address their concerns,” he concluded.
The Black Lives Matter co-founder who now leads Black Futures Lab, Alicia Garza, observed the strict voter requirements that include restrictions for returning mail-in ballots.
Noting the unique challenges faced by Black voters, Black Futures Lab partnered with other groups to look closer at vote-by-mail in three states, Alabama, Nevada, and Texas.
“The first solution and probably the only solution to turn the tide of the ongoing and multiple assaults on our rights is to build independent progressive Black political power,” Garza asserted. “We must equip Black voters with the tools necessary to be powerful. Unfortunately, black voters are targeted by misinformation and disinformation every day,” she determined.
“In 2020, Black voters were getting messages online telling them not to go to the polls, so we must make sure that our people can get to the polls and challenge the laws and policies that keep us from making important decisions. Black voters are kept from being powerful on purpose, by policies and the conservative movement has designed.”
Krystal Leaphart of Black Girls Vote said her organization begins engaging young girls as early as middle school with the mantra that “our vote is our voice.”
“We target all age groups and communities of Black girls, and we seek to educate and empower Black girls. However, we must make sure that those on the margins are fully engaged,” Leaphart stated.
“Many young people are shocked at the amount of power that we collectively have,” Leaphart continued. “When we engage young Black girls, they are excited to vote, and the earlier we get to people and get them excited about the process and get them civically engaged, the better we will be.”
Leaphart noted that issues affecting adults also bother the young.
“They are dealing with many the same issues that are not restricted to adults,” Leaphart asserted.
“They are dealing with reproductive justice issues, Black girl pushout, and overcriminalization. But hearing that those issues can be dealt with at the polls and talking to elected officials have them excited.”
In a radio interview, Democratic Strategist Karen Finney implored all to understand what was at stake during the 2022 midterms. “It’s very clear in terms of the GOP candidates who emerged – one of the big things we saw is that people who were peddlers of The Big Lie, deniers of the 2020 election, seem to do pretty well, regardless of Donald Trump,” Finney told radio personality Charles Ellison on his Reality Check show.
“That tells you a lot about what their agenda would be if they win. Voters came out in record numbers in 2020, and we did something extraordinary,” Finney recounted.
“We’re going to have to do it again in 2022 if we want to keep America moving away from what I saw as a very divisive destruction of the Trump years.”

  • A stunning Jan. 6 hearing removes any doubt
    about Trump’s role in the deadly insurrection

    U.S. Capitol under violent attack on Jan. 6, 2021

    The stunning revelations broadcast during the House Select Committee investigation of the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol included the laying out of a scheme by former President Donald Trump to retain power.
    While many have long understood that Trump did nothing to stop the deadly riots, the Committee laid bare his scheme that led to the death of at least nine people – including five law enforcement members – and left more than 150 officers injured.
    
“It was a sophisticated seven-part plan to overturn the presidential election and prevent the transfer of presidential power,” Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the chair of the House committee, remarked during the presentation.
Further, Cheney noted that several GOP members of Congress pressed Trump for pardons during the insurrection – the inference could explain why many Republicans have remained loyal to the former President and have shown a reluctance to participate in the hearings.
    
Cheney also reminded the Committee of a Tweet sent by Trump encouraging the attack. “Be there, will be wild!” Trump tweeted. Trump’s supporters responded, including the extremist groups Proud Boys and Oath Keepers.
    
One of the rioters read Trump’s tweet on a megaphone at the Capitol, and others, including one that criticized Vice President Mike Pence for denying a request to overturn the election loss to Joe Biden.
    
“Hang Mike Pence,” the supporters chanted. “Maybe he deserves it,” Trump allegedly said in response. Committee officials then displayed a photo of noose and gallows erected near the Capitol by the insurrectionists.
    
Capitol Police officer Caroline Edwards emerged during the June 9 public hearings and recounted for the first time her trauma. “It was something like I’ve seen in the movies,” the officer stated. “I couldn’t believe my eyes; there were officers on the ground. They were bleeding,” Edwards recounted. “I was slipping in people’s blood. It was carnage. It was chaos.”
    
Further, documentarian Nick Quested described his interaction with the Proud Boys, whose leader, Enrique Tarrio, recently was hit with sedition charges related to the attack. Quested had been embedded with the Proud Boys and shared never-before-seen footage of the members, including Tarrio’s meeting with the Oath Keepers.
Additionally, a new video of the deposition by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, revealed that Pence gave the orders to send National Guard troops to the Capitol. However, Milley said administration officials told Pence to falsely state that Trump gave those orders.
    
Testimony also came from Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, who served as an adviser for the Trump administration. Ivanka Trump testified that she accepted then-Attorney General William Barr’s declaration that Biden had defeated Trump in the 2020 election.
    
Several former White House officials from the Trump administration said the President refused to stop the insurrection and ignored his team of advisers who urged him to intervene.
    
“Our democracy remains in danger,” Committee Chair Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) declared during the hearing. “The conspiracy to thwart the will of the people is not over. Unfortunately, there are those in this country who thirst for power but have no love or respect for what makes America great: devotion to the Constitution, allegiance to the rule of law, our shared journey to build a more perfect Union.”

     

  • Newswire: California Reparations Task Force releases detailed ‘Report on the Harms of Slavery and Racism in the U.S.’; propose specific remedies

    By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent

    Federal and state governments, including California, failed to protect Black artists, culture-makers, and media-makers from discrimination and simultaneously promoted discriminatory narratives.
    Further, state governments memorialized the Confederacy as just and heroic through monument building while suppressing the nation’s history of racism and slavery.
    Government actions at every level across the country, including California, have directly segregated, and discriminated against African Americans at work. After intensive research, the California Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans reached those conclusions and made concrete recommendations to compensate those affected.
    The group issued its interim report to state legislators on June 1.Separate from the federal proposal pushed by Texas Democratic Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, the report surveyed ongoing, and compounding harms experienced by African Americans because of slavery.
    It also studied the lingering effects the slave trade had on America.The report includes a set of preliminary recommendations for policies that legislatures in the Golden State could adopt to remedy the harms.Officials plan to release a final report next year.
    “Federal and state policies like affirmative action produced mixed results and were short-lived,” Task Force members wrote in the report. “African Americans continue to face employment discrimination today in the country and California,” members wrote.They determined that the American government at all levels, including in California, has historically criminalized African Americans for social control and maintaining an economy based on exploited Black labor.
    “This criminalization is an enduring badge of slavery and has contributed to the over-policing of Black neighborhoods, the school to prison pipeline, the mass incarceration of African Americans, a refusal to accept African Americans as victims, and other inequities in nearly every corner of the American and California legal systems,” the report authors stated.
    “As a result, the American and California criminal justice system physically harms, imprisons, and kills African Americans more than other racial groups relative to their percentage of the population.”
    The authors continued: “The government actions described in this report have had a devastating effect on the health of African Americans in the country and California. “Compared to white Americans, African Americans live shorter lives and are more likely to suffer and die from almost all diseases and medical conditions than white Americans.
    “Researchers have linked these health outcomes in part to African Americans’ unrelenting experience of racism in our society. In addition to physical harm, African Americans experience psychological harm, which can profoundly undermine Black children’s emotional and physical well-being and academic success.”
    The Task Force has recommended several remedies, including:
    • Implement a detailed program of reparations for African Americans.• Develop and implement other policies, programs, and measures to close the racial wealth gap in California.• Provide funding, and technical assistance to Black-led and Black community-based land trusts to support wealth building and affordable housing.• Establish a cabinet-level secretary position over an African American/Freedmen Affairs Agency tasked with implementing the recommendations of this task force.
    They said the agency would identify past harms, prevent future harm, and work with other state agencies and branches of California’s government to mitigate the wrongs.
    The Task Force suggested policies to the Governor and the Legislature designed to compensate for the harms caused by the legacy of anti-Black discrimination and work to eliminate systemic racism that has developed because of the enslavement of African Americans in the United States.
    The authors recommended that the agency include the following:
    • A branch to process claims with the state and assist claimants in filing for eligibility.• A genealogy branch to support potential claimants with genealogical research and to confirm eligibility.• A reparations tribunal to adjudicate substantive claims for past harms.• An office of immediate relief to expedite claims.• A civic engagement branch to support ongoing political education on African American history and to support civic engagement among African American youth.• A freedmen education branch to offer free education and to facilitate the free tuition initiative between claimants and California schools.• A social services and family affairs branch to identify and mitigate how current and previous policies have damaged and destabilized Black families.• Services might include treatment for trauma and family healing services to strengthen the family unit, stress resiliency services, financial planning services, career planning, and civil and family court services.• A cultural affairs branch to restore African American cultural/historical sites; establish monuments; advocate for the removal of racist relics; support knowledge production and archival research; and provide support for African Americans in the entertainment industry, including identifying and removing barriers to advancement into leadership and decision-making positions in the arts, entertainment, and sports industries.• A legal affairs office to coordinate a range of free legal services, including criminal defense attorneys for criminal trials and parole hearings; free arbitration and mediation services; and to advocate for civil and criminal justice reforms.• A division of medical services for public and environmental health.• A business affairs office to provide ongoing education related to entrepreneurialism and financial literacy, offer business grants, and establish public-private reparative justice-oriented partnerships.
    A copy of the report is available on line from the California.gov site.