Greene County Democrat

Tag: President Donald Trump

  • Ben Carson sworn-in as Trump’s only Black cabinet pick

    By Stacy M. Brown NNPA Newswire Contributor
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    Dr. Ben Carson (left) was sworn in as the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development on Thursday, March 2. Carson’s wife along with his 5-year-old granddaughter, Tesora held the Bible. (Shevry Lassiter/The Washington Informer)

    The swearing-in of all the primary members of President Donald Trump’s cabinet is just about complete.

    Most of Trump’s cabinet—from Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross—are rich, White and male.

    On Thursday, March 2, retired neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson broke the mold with his swearing-in as Housing and Urban Development secretary, officially becoming the only African-American in Trump’s cabinet.

    The former GOP presidential candidate was confirmed by a 58-41 vote, leaving just four of Trump’s 22 cabinet-level nominees still unsworn.

    “Right now, our country is the patient and it’s not a Democrat or a Republican patient..It’s an American patient,” Carson said at his swearing-in as his wife, Lacena and granddaughter Tesora held the Bible. “We have a duty to use the gifts that God has given all of us in order to heal that patient.”

    Carson, 65, was born into an impoverished Detroit family, but ultimately became a popular neurosurgeon who ran for president last year winning the

    In January, he vowed to begin his job at HUD by going on a listening tour before developing any long-term plans for the department, which has more than 8,000 employees and a $50 billion budget.

    In February, during Black History Month, Carson joined Trump for a tour of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture where the president said Carson would work very closely with him.

    “HUD has a meaning far beyond housing,” Trump said. “If properly done, it’s a meaning that’s as big as anything there is.”

    Carson, whose mother at times received food stamps to provide for her family, grew up surrounded by some of the housing assistance programs he will now oversee.

    “The New York Times” reported that, rather than embrace the programs that once sustained his family and the families around him, Carson adopted standard Republican beliefs that too much government help—both in desegregating neighborhoods and in lifting people from poverty—can discourage people from working hard.

    Carson recently had to correct statements which he made that suggested Black people who were brought involuntarily to be enslaved were equated with other immigrants seeking opportunity.

    Carson was awarded a scholarship to Yale University, and at 33, he was named director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center. He later became an author and a philanthropist supporting scholarships for young, often impoverished students.

    “Housing discrimination continues to be a significant problem in this country, unfairly limiting people’s choices about where to live,” Lisa Rice, executive vice president of the National Fair Housing Alliance, said in a statement. “We look to Secretary Carson to marshal the resources of the department he leads to combat this problem, and to fight all forms of housing discrimination.”

  • The Women’s March organizers are planning ‘A Day Without A Woman’ strike

    By: Desire Thompson, VIBE
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    Womens March leader

    The minds behind the Women’s March on Washington aren’t giving up on the people. Their latest move hints at an economic boycott titled, “A Day Without A Woman.”
    The announcement was made Monday (Feb. 6) through their social channels with little detail. What has been shared is the general statement, “The will of the people will stand.” Last month, over a million women from all over the world came together in solidarity to protest the election of President Donald Trump, climate change, immigration laws and unlawful police practice. The Women’s March on Washington brought 500,000 people to the city, making it the most recent largest demonstration in the area. Crowd specialists reportedly stated the Women’s March brought three times the number of people than Trump’s inauguration ceremony.
    CNN reports after the exposure of several companies lining up with Trump, the organization made up of Tamika Mallory, Carmen Perez, Linda Sarsour and Bob Bland, released a statement on those boycotting companies like Uber and Nordstrom. “At a time when our foundational principles of freedom and equality are under threat, The Women’s March is committed to engaging in actions that affirmatively build community, strengthen relationships and support local, women- and minority-owned businesses,” The Women’s March said in a statement.
    General strikes thrived during the Civil Rights Movement and other labor movements. Strike4Democracy is currently planning a general strike on Feb. 17. So far, 16,000 people plan to take part in it. Last year, actor Isiah Washington attempted to launch a boycott where African Americans didn’t spend, work or attend school. Middle-class African Americans have been known to spend a hefty amount in a retail market, even with specks of racial inequality proving that black families have less access to substantial goods and services than white families. Nonetheless, the Women’s March organizers have stressed the importance of inclusion.

  • African Union blasts Trump rule barring African muslim immigrants

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    Outgoing Commissioner Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma of the African Union

       Jan. 30, 2017 (GIN) – An outraged African Union recalled the kidnapping of Black Africans as it considered the controversial new US anti-immigrant rules. After forcibly bringing Africans to the U.S. as slave labor, noted the AU, Washington now slams the door on Muslim immigrants entering the U.S.

    “It is clear that globally we are entering very difficult times,” cautioned outgoing AU Commissioner Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, speaking at a recent two-day summit in Addis Ababa of the 53 member states.

    “The very country to which many of our people were taken as slaves during the transatlantic slave trade has now decided to ban refugees from some of our countries.”

    Just before the weekend, President Donald Trump suspended all US refugee programs and banned immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries, three of which are AU members.

    The executive order signed by Mr. Trump specifically bars Libyans, Somalians and Sudanese from travelling to the US. It also blocks visas for citizens from four Middle Eastern countries – Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Iran.

    All US refugee programs are frozen for 120 days, and the flow of Syrian refugees to America is ended indefinitely.

    The new UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, speaking at the AU’s summit in Ethiopia, commended African countries for opening their borders to refugees and people fleeing violence while in other parts of the world, including the developed West, they are closing borders and building walls.

    He praised African nations for being among the world’s largest and most generous hosts of refugees.

    AU Summit proceedings began with the swift election of Chadian Foreign Minister Moussa Faki Mahamat, 56, as the new chairperson of the AU Commission, beating four other candidates.

    Faki won in a final battle against his Kenyan counterpart Amina Mohamed after seven rounds of voting. The Kenyan government praised Ms. Mohamed, once the odds-on favorite, for waging a “valiant race”.  Faki takes on the role as his country’s President Idriss Deby Itno hands over the rotating presidency of the AU to Guinea’s Alpha Conde.

    A former prime minister, Faki has been at the forefront of the fight against Islamists in Nigeria, Mali and the Sahel and has promised “development and security” will top his agenda as chief of the 54-member continental bloc.     Faki said he dreams of an Africa where the “sound of guns will be drowned out by cultural songs and rumbling factories” and pledged to streamline the bureaucratic AU during his four-year term in office.

     

  • Questions remain on Jeff Sessions’ role in prosecuting Michael Donald’s Klan lynching in Mobile in the 1980’s

    L to R: Michael Donald and Jeff Sessions

    News Analysis by: Zack Carter and John Zippert

    President Donald Trump has nominated his early supporter, Alabama U. S. Senator, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, for the position of Attorney General of the United States.
    Questions remain about Jeff Sessions position on civil rights, voting rights, women’s rights, LGBT rights, hate crimes, criminal justice and many other issues that will face Sessions if he his confirmed as the nation’s chief prosecutor and law enforcement official.
    The Democrat previously published in our December 28, 2016 issue an extensive statement by the Alabama New South Coalition and the SOS Movement for Justice and Democracy in opposition to Sessions nomination (see http://www.greenecodemocrat). This statement concentrates on Sessions role in the selective and unsuccessful prosecution of the “Marion Three” in 1985/86 as the beginning of a national Republican effort of voter suppression that continues to this day.
    We have recently seen paid TV ads advocating the confirmation of Sessions as U. S. Attorney General in which he proclaims himself, “a champion of civil rights and an advocate of criminal justice”.
    In this story, we look back at Sessions’ role as U. S. Attorney for the Southern District, based in Mobile, in the notorious case of the Klan lynching of Michael Donald in Mobile from 1981 to 1989.

    The lynching of Michael Donald – March 20, 1981

    On March 20, 1981, Michael Donald, a 19 yr. old African American trade school student was found hanging from a small ornamental “popcorn” tree on an old residential street, across the street from where several Klansmen lived. Michael’s body was crumpled from beatings and his neck slashed. The brutally slayed young man was hanging hideously about a mile from Mobile’s City Hall and the Courthouse – where a KKK cross had been burned on the lawn the same night. The same courthouse where the recent trial of an African American, Josephus Anderson, ended in a hung jury – he was on trial for killing a white policeman, and claimed it was in self-defense.
    Over time, it was established that four Klan members participated in the killing of Michael Donald. They were Bennie Jack Hayes, a local Klan leader, his son Henry Hays (age 22 at the time of the lynching), James Knowles (age 17) and Frank L. Cox (age 25) Hayes son-in-law, who supplied the gun and the rope for the crime.
    From the Court records, Knowles confessed to the crime and according to the record:

    “… Henry Hays and Knowles got a rope, which they tied into a hangman’s noose, and a gun from fellow Klansmen. [Knowles testified it was Frank Cox]. The two then set out to look for a black man. They randomly found Michael Donald, pulled alongside him in their car, and asked for directions. They forced him into the car at gunpoint. Knowles made Donald empty his pockets; Knowles’s trial testimony indicates he wanted to be sure the victim was unarmed.”
    Hays found a desolate area and parked; all three men got out of the car. Facing Hays and Knowles (who was holding the gun), Donald jumped Knowles in an attempt to escape. After a struggle, Hays and Knowles forced Donald to the ground. Hays retrieved the noose, and the two of them put it around Donald’s neck. Hays dragged Donald while Knowles beat him with a tree limb; and when Hays’s hands began to hurt, they switched. When Donald collapsed, the two men dragged him, face first, across the ground. Autopsy reports showed Donald probably died from asphyxiation during this time. Nevertheless, Henry Hays slashed Donald’s throat. Donald’s body was found later that morning, hanging from a tree on Herndon Avenue.” (http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-11th-circuit/1304129.html)”

    According to testimony by Assistant U. S. Attorney, Thomas Figures, an African-American attorney, who was working in Sessions office, made to the Senate Judiciary Committee in its 1986 hearing on Sessions nomination to become a Federal District Judge, Figures says that Sessions was reluctant to take up the Michael Donald lynching case.
    Based on pressure from Michael Donald’s family, their attorney, State Senator Michael Figures (Thomas Figure’s brother), work by FBI investigators and local law enforcement, Sessions changed his mind. Sessions says he then pushed for Henry Hayes and James Knowles to be tried in state courts, where they could receive the death penalty, because at that time there were no provisions for the death penalty in Federal cases.
    The testimony of Thomas Figures and four other Assistant U. S. Attorneys was instrumental in causing the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1986 to refuse to confirm Sessions for a Federal judgeship.
    Figures testified to examples of his former boss’s alleged racial insensitivity before the Senate Judiciary Committee, saying Sessions had called him a “boy” on several occasions and had once told him that “he believed the NAACP, the SCLC, Operation PUSH, and the National Council of Churches were all un-American organizations teaching anti-American values.” On one occasion, when Figures upbraided Sessions’ secretary over what he felt was an inappropriate personal comment she made to him, he said Sessions had summoned him to his office and admonished him to “be careful what you say to white folks.”
    In their investigation of the Michael Donald case, local law enforcement found that the three men Knowles, Hays and Cox were regular users of marijuana. This prompted Sessions classic and often repeated statement, “ I used to respect the Klan, until I found out that many of them smoked pot.” An FBI agent confirmed hearing Session’s remark as well, albeit the FBI agent felt it was ‘just parlor humor’. But we all know that jokes, especially at the expense of others, usually reveal what is in a person’s heart!
    In 1983, James Knowles was sentenced by a local Mobile Court to 99 years in state prison; Henry Hays was sentenced to death for murdering Michael Donald. After routine appeals, Henry Hays was the first white person executed in Alabama for murdering a Black person.

    What happened to Bennie J. Hays and Frank Cox?
    There were four people involved in the Michael Donald lynching. We have accounted for two, what happened to the other two – Cox and Bennie Hays. And what was Jeff Sessions role in their prosecution?
    Sessions, who was reluctant to handle the case, turned the prosecutions over to Mobile D. A. Chris Galanos for local action. In 1985, Galanos indicted the two – Bennie Hays and Frank Cox for “conspiracy to commit murder”. When the case went to trial Mobile Circuit Judge Zoghby had to dismiss the case because conspiracy has a three-year statute of limitations and the case was filed after three years had passed. Bennie Hays died during the trial and Cox walked free.
    Sessions has never been asked why he didn’t pay closer attention and supervision to the case and allowed the local D. A. Galanos to seek an indictment for conspiracy after the time had expired. Was this action deliberate on Sessions part? Did he allow the indictment on a lesser charge when he knew the statute of limitations had run? Does this call into question his sensitivity and skills as a prosecutor? What will this mean on other critical cases if he is confirmed as Attorney General?
    Meanwhile Attorney Michael Figures assisted by the Southern Poverty Law Center brought a civil lawsuit against the Klan on behalf of Michael Donald’s mother. In 1987, they won a million dollar judgment against the United Klans of America and forced them to sell their office in Tuscaloosa with the proceeds going to the Donald family. The civil case also brought out more evidence against the perpetrators.
    In 1989, Frank Cox was found guilty of murdering Michael Donald and sentenced to 99 years in state prison. Cox was released after only 11 years in 2000. Knowles was released in 2010 after 25 years in prison. What role did Jeff Sessions play in the early release of Frank Cox, who supplied the gun and the rope for Michael Donald’s lynching, has he ever been asked?
    In addition to Jeff Sessions insensitivity on the murder of Michael Donald, we have many other instances where he showed little concern for the conditions of Black and poor people.
    Jeff Sessions was the only Gulf Coast Senator to vote against Senator Richard Shelby’s bill for supplementary assistance to victims of Hurricane Katrina.
    Paul Nelson, a 4th generation fisher from Alabama’s Gulf Coast and commended by a Mobile County’s administrator for for his key role in getting 301 homes rebuilt with Katrina CDBG funds said: “Senator Jeff Sessions did nothing for the people he represents who were devastated by Katrina! So how can he be trusted to represent justice for all in our courtrooms.”

    Zack Carter is a community organizer who helped bring national attention to unjust Katrina and BP recovery policies.
    He was trade union activist in Mobile during the 1980’s and advocated for Labor to speak out against the Klan lynching of Michael Donald.. John Zippert is Co-Publisher of the Greene County Democrat.

  • John Gore, lawyer who defended racial gerrymandering picked to head DOJ Civil Rights Division

     

    By: Lee Fang, The Intercept

    John Gore who has worked to defend laws that critics say are designed to weaken the voting rights of African-Americans and other minorities, was selected by President Donald Trump to serve as a senior civil rights official at the Department of Justice.

    Gore’s new role as Trump’s choice for deputy assistant attorney general of the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department is notable because he will lead the division that oversees civil rights laws, including voter suppression issues. Trump and his nominee to lead the Justice Department, Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, are strong supporters of voting restrictions such as voter identification.

    The appointment of Gore represents a dramatic break from the the civil rights legacy of the outgoing Obama Justice Department, which has filed suits against voter restrictions in Wisconsin, Texas, North Carolina, and other states. Under Obama, the civil rights division was restructured to take on more cases, with former Attorney General Eric Holder describing the team as the agency’s “crown jewel.”

    In stark contrast, Gore has worked to defend Republican redistricting laws in Virginia, South Carolina, New York, and Florida — including maps that opponents say were drawn to maximize Republican seats in Congress and frequently employed a strategy of packing African-American voters into a single district to dilute their voting power in neighboring districts.

    In Florida and Virginia, Gore also intervened on behalf of Republicans to defend new voter ID laws, rules civil rights group have assailed for reducing participation rates among African-Americans.

    In Virginia, for example, Gore was one of the main attorneys working to defend a 2011 Republican map that moved black voters from four different districts into Virginia’s 3rd Congressional District, a majority African-American district held by a Democrat that encompasses the areas around Richmond, Hampton Roads, and Newport News. The strategy appeared designed to weaken Democratic chances in the four neighboring districts, all held by Republicans, by lowering the number of African-Americans, who tend to vote for Democratic candidates.

    A brief filed by the local NAACP argued that the map’s “high concentration of African-American voters” represented a “racial gerrymander” that violated voters’ due process rights. The GOP legislature argued that politics, not race, was the motivating factor in drawing the boundaries.

    Federal courts overturned the GOP map, creating new borders that added African-American voters to the 4th Congressional district, which was previously represented by a white Republican. In 2016 the district for the first time elected an African-American Democrat.

    In 2015, a resident of Virginia challenged the state’s newly passed law requiring a photo identification to vote, arguing that because minority groups were less likely to have a photo ID, the law “disproportionately suppresses the vote of African-Americans and Latinos in Virginia.”

    A legal team from the law firm Jones Day, including Gore, filed an amicus brief in support of the voter ID law. The brief claimed that although the voter ID law might lead to a “relative shortfall in minority participation,” the true difference was attributable to “different levels of electoral interest or underlying socio-economic disparities,” and therefore the state’s actions were legal.

    In December 2016, a federal appeals court upheld the photo ID law, ruling that “there was no evidence to suggest racially discriminatory intent in the law’s enactment.”

    As Buzzfeed reported, just hours after Jones Day announced that Gore would be leaving for the administration position, the Justice Department moved to delay a hearing sought by the Obama administration to challenge the Texas voter ID law, one of the strictest in the country. The Justice Department noted that it sought a delay “because of the federal government’s change in administration, which took place on January 20, 2017.”

    On Monday, during his evening meeting with congressional leaders, President Trump reiterated the false claim that millions of undocumented people voted in the last election, costing him the popular vote.