Greene County Democrat

Tag: theGrio

  • Newswire : VP Kamala Harris honors Shirley Chisholm with historic Congressional Gold Medal bill signing

    Vice President Kamala Harris, joined by U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee (CA-12) and U.S. Senator Laphonza Butler (D-CA), signs the Shirley Chisholm Congressional Gold Medal Act at the U.S. Capitol, Monday, December 9, 2024, in Washington, D.C. (Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson) and photo of Shirley Chisholm in 1972, announcing her candidacy for the Presidency.

    By Gerren Kieth Gaynor, The Grio

    Vice President Kamala Harris signed a bill bestowing the late Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm with a Congressional Gold Medal, a symbolic and historic moment in Washington for America’s first Black female vice president. 

    Harris’ signature instructed the United States Congress to posthumously award Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to Congress and first African American to run for president in a major party, with Congress’s highest civilian honor.

    Vice President Harris said she “proudly” and “humbly” signed the Shirley Chisholm Congressional Gold Medal Act on Monday while on Capitol Hill, where she also swore in Senators-designate Andy Kim, D-N.J., and Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Senator-elect Pete Ricketts, R-Neb. The bill will now go to President Joe Biden’s desk to be signed into law.

    As vice president, Harris serves as president of the U.S. Senate, which grants her the authority to sign bills before they go to the president’s desk for final signature. Typically, the president pro tempore of the Senate — currently U.S. Senator Patty Murray — signs such bills. However, the vice president felt it necessary and meaningful to personally sign the Shirley Chisholm Congressional Gold Medal Act, theGrio learned from a source with knowledge of the vice president’s decision.

    The bill, introduced by U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., is years in the making. Congresswoman Lee and Senator Laphonza Butler, D-Calif., stood beside Vice President Harris as she signed the legislation. Lee, a mentee of Chisholm, told theGrio in a recent interview, “This Congressional Gold Medal is part of not only her legacy but part of reminding people who she was and the contributions that she made to this country and to the world.”

    Throughout her 20 years in Congress, Lee also worked to have a portrait of Chisholm commissioned and hung in the hall of Congress, create a U.S. postal stamp in tribute to her, and a resolution honoring her contributions to American politics.

    Chisholm, who died in 2005 at 80, made history in 1968 as the first African-American woman to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, representing New York’s 12th Congressional District. After only two terms in Congress, she made history again as the first Democratic woman, first African American and first Black woman to seek a major party’s nomination to run for president in 1972. 

    During her political career, Chisholm championed racial and gender equality, early education, and child welfare. She is also a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus and, at its founding, was the caucus’ only female member. 

    Vice President Harris has long acknowledged how Chisholm inspired her political career. As Lee pointed out to theGrio, Harris used the colors of Chisholm’s presidential campaign in her 2019 presidential campaign. During that presidential run, during an interview with theGrio, Harris said, “I stand, as so many of us do, on her shoulders.” She added, “Her strength as an individual, as a woman, as a Black woman, was so powerful and resonated in such an incredible way … even today.”

    While campaigning for president in October, the vice president named Chisholm as one of five people, dead or alive, she would have dinner with on the “All The Smoke” podcast. “I would love to sit with her. I feel that I know her because I have studied her life,” Harris said. The Vice President also emphasized that her own historic run for president was “a path that she created.”

    Though Harris was unsuccessful in her 2024 presidential bid, Lee told theGrio Shirley Chisholm would be “applauding” the vice president. “Kamala picked up that baton, and she’s still running. I think Shirley is pleased and happy and smiling and saying, keep at it because sooner or later we’ll have a woman of color, a Black woman specifically, as our president,” said Congresswoman Lee.

  • Newswire: Supreme Court to hear Alabama voting rights case that could impact Black voters everywhere

    By: Ray Marcano, The Grio.

    The U.S. Supreme Court, on October 4, 2022, will hear a case that could upend voting rights and dilute the power of the Black vote in Alabama but potentially across the country.
    The maps as drawn “are purposeful attempts to reduce the impact of Black voters and the preference and will of minority voters in Alabama,” Tish Gotell Faulks, the legal director of the Alabama ACLU, told theGrio.
    Alabama’s legislature passed its redistricting maps in 2020, but a coalition of voters, including Milligan, sued the state, claiming the maps violated the Voting Rights Act. A federal court ruled in the plaintiffs’ favor and enjoined the state from implementing the maps for the 2022 midterm election.
    In Merrill v. Milligan, the court will determine whether Alabama’s redistricting plan violates the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Plaintiffs argue that Alabama’s congressional map for its seven districts unfairly weakens the votes and influence of Black people, who make up nearly 27% of the state population.
    The maps, as currently drawn, contain one majority-Black district, represented by Congresswoman Terri Sewell. However, opponents of the plan argue that there should be two such districts based on the state’s Black population.
    Evan Milligan, the lead plaintiff, told theGrio, “This case will be a defining moment for voting rights as traditional civic engagement in our country.” The maps as drawn “are purposeful attempts to reduce the impact of Black voters and the preference and will of minority voters in Alabama,” Tish Gotell Faulks, the legal director of the Alabama ACLU, told theGrio.
    Alabama’s legislature passed its redistricting maps in 2020, but a coalition of voters, including Milligan, sued the state, claiming the maps violated the Voting Rights Act. A federal court ruled in the plaintiffs’ favor and enjoined the state from implementing the maps for the 2022 midterm election.
    “We conclude that the Milligan plaintiffs are substantially likely to establish that the plan violates Section Two of the Voting Rights Act,” the United States District Court in Northern Alabama wrote in its preliminary injunction.  The court also concluded that, based on several factors, “Black voters have less opportunity than other Alabamians to elect candidates of their choice to Congress.”

    Secretary of State John H. Merrill appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, in which the high court overturned the lower court ruling by a 5-4 vote and allowed Alabama to implement the maps in the November election. Chief Justice John Roberts joined the three liberal judges in the minority dissent.
    Yurij Rudensky, senior counsel at the Brennan Institute, said Alabama’s legal argument comes down to a desire to weaken the Voting Rights Act, which would further disenfranchise voters who already have difficulty getting fair representation.
    Alabama isn’t arguing against the merits of the lower court’s ruling, Rudensky said. Instead, the state wants the Supreme Court to “rewrite the Voting Rights Act to weaken it, to change decades of precedent (and) safeguards that have protected communities of color around the country … against discriminatory redistricting and other election schemes,” he explained.
    Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act prohibits any voting “practice or procedure” that discriminates based on race and reinforces the 15th Amendment, which in 1870 granted Black men the right to vote.
    The plaintiffs argue the state should have a second majority Black district to ensure fair representation for a demographic that grew faster than any other between 2010 and 2020, adding nearly 88,000 residents.
    “Now, (Alabama) is saying that despite the growth of the Black community over the last 10 years, their population should be denied Congressional representation,” Milligan, the executive director of the coalition-building group Alabama Forward, said.
    Alabama’s 1.3 million Black residents account for 27% of the state’s population. Currently, 16% of the districts (one in seven) have a majority Black population. Two of seven districts would increase the figure to nearly 29 percent.
    But the state, among its arguments, says it drew race-neutral districts and called race-based districts unconstitutional. “Requiring racial preferences in single-member districts exceeds any remedial measure the Fifteenth Amendment could authorize,” Alabama said in its brief.
    Rudensky referred to the race-neutral argument as “audacious” and flips the purpose of the voting rights act “on its head.” Alabama’s thinking “fails from a logical standpoint, that you could have a law that targets discriminatory schemes but can’t take race into account when undoing the discriminatory harm,” he added.
    Another plaintiff, Letetia Jackson, lives in a Republican area of Alabama and remains frustrated by the lack of representation.  “I have not had a congressional member come to our community, talk to us about resources, and who even care what our issues are,” Jackson told theGrio. She said after the lawsuit, she did get an invitation to town hall events that weren’t in her community.
    “The stake, in this case, is huge, greater than just the state of Alabama,” Jackson said. “The outcome of this case will determine whether the language of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act will be upheld. Because if it isn’t, democracy, as we know it, the ability to vote and have elected representation as we know it, will be forever changed

  • Newswire: Kamala Harris receives COVID-19 vaccine, urges trust in minority communities

    By: April Ryan, The Grio

    Kamala Harris receives coronavirus vaccine

    Vice President-elect Kamala Harris made a plea to the public at the United Medical Center in Southeast Washington D.C., a predominantly Black community, where she received her first dose of the Moderna vaccine. TheGrio was on the ground as the vice president-elect emphasized that the vaccine is about saving lives, saying, “I trust the scientists and it’s the scientists who created and approve the vaccine … I urge everyone when it’s your turn to get vaccinated.”
    Harris addressed the press at the hospital’s auditorium that became a makeshift vaccination hospital room. She sat in a standard mint green hospital recliner that was accompanied by a hospital room table that had tissues and hand sanitizer visible as she received the vaccination from nurse Patricia Cummings, a Guyana born immigrant to the United States.
    Vice President-elect Harris said the vaccine was “relatively painless.” She added, “It is safe … literally this is about saving lives.”
    The venue and the backdrop of her public vaccination was no coincidence. It is meant to combat the mistrust in minority communities with medical trials and other health disparity matters. As it relates to the COVID-19 vaccination, which is still in the trial phase for Moderna and Pfizer, theGrio asked Harris specifically about the issue of minority mistrust of the vaccine.
    “I’m [here] today because first of all we have phenomenal healthcare providers like Patricia who serve the community and we have hospitals and medical centers and clinics like these all over the country who are staffed by people who understand the community, who often come from the community and who administer all-year-round trusted healthcare,” said Harris.
    “I want to remind people that right in your community is where you can take the vaccine, where you will receive a vaccine by folks you may know. Folks who work in the same hospital where your children may have been born. Folks who work in the same hospital where an elderly relative received the kind of care that they needed.”
    On hand for the event was Dr. Talal M. Nsouli, the director of the Watergate & Burke Allergy and Asthma Centers.  He further discussed the success of the vaccine saying out of the 2 million people who have taken the vaccine in medical trials and in the disbursement of the emergency use authorization, “only four people had allergic reactions.”
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